“The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purpose within him.” — Carl Jung
Imagine a world that looks like the image below.
In the very center of this world is an island representing all the things you know. Surrounding your island is an ocean that is everything you don’t know. Encompassing that is the universe of the things no one knows.
New knowledge comes from the areas of the unknown. But how does that knowledge get to you?
Carl Jung was an Austrian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. He explored how knowledge travels from the area of the unknown to the known. Jung posited that knowledge doesn’t just jump from one circle to the other. It passes through four stages of analysis before it becomes useful to us.
It is the artist, he believed, who stands on the borders between the unknown and the known. Artists act as the guide, the interpreter of hidden knowledge. They create images that help us understand these mysteries.
Artists don’t often understand what they are doing. Their intuition guides them — if they are real artists.
Consider the high art of the Old Masters. We stare at those works, and they move us. We don’t understand why or how those images move us. We know, though, there is something that is more than paint and canvas.
Six million people from all over the world visit the Mona Lisa each year. Why does that priceless painting attract so many people? Why do we value it so much?
Paintings are not the only works that move us. Works of art like Michelangelo’s Pieta and David touch our souls. The symphonies of Beethoven and Shostakovich inspire our imaginations to soar. We can’t explain the effect these works have on us. Imagine, though, how much more impoverished humanity would be if these works did not exist. Such is the role of art and artists. They encourage us to reach for the stars and seize our destiny.
We’re going to explore this idea (and more) next time. If you’ve never picked up a paintbrush or if you’ve been painting for years, you connect to this tradition.
Master Class gives you the skills to continue the tradition of the Old Masters. It takes you beyond the basics of Bill’s method of oil painting. We’ve spent nearly thirty years developing this course. We’ve tested it on thousands of students. Almost one hundred years of teaching and painting experience went into this course. If you are ready to take your art to the level of an elite artist, then Master Class is for you.