The experience of listening with the heart
cannot be captured in words. The heart has its own way of knowing. It
must experience something to know it. The heart cannot be convinced by
words alone; the heart must understand. Words can explain the work, but
explanation can tell us only how the work is similar to, different from,
typical of. . . . Explanation leaves the work itself mute. Understanding,
gained through listening with the heart, allows the art to speak to us.
In the exhibition, this listening is characterized
by an openness to experience that is not possessive or judgmental but
grateful and self-surrendering. This listening perceives a world full
of meaning. It assumes that we are not just passive observers in the world
but active participants in an evolving creation that is revealing itself
constantly through nature, other people, and dreams and visions.
The work in this exhibition invites us
into conversation–a heart-to-heart talk in which we can listen
to these artists as they describe, through their art, a reality in
which
the human, natural, and spiritual worlds are not separate, distinct categories
but a continuum. Through the art and the words of these artists,
we are
invited to share their understanding of our world.
