Have you ever tried to explain a feeling and run out of words halfway through? You know exactly what is happening inside you, but the moment you reach for words to express it, you go silent right from the tip of your tongue.In such situations, a song, a painting, or even a simple doodle can sometimes do the job far better. It delivers what we want to express in a far better way than a single sentence can put across. That gap between what we feel and what we can say is one of the oldest puzzles of being human.Wynetka Ann Reynolds, former chancellor of Ohio State University, brings light to the thought.
Quote of the day
Anyone who says you can’t see a thought simply doesn’t know art
Wynetka Ann Reynolds
What does the quote mean?
On the surface, it might sound impossible, like how can thoughts be visible? Ideas or thoughts cannot be looked at or held in your hand. But Reynolds puts things differently, when an artist paints grief, sculpts longing, or composes joy, they are talking of something held inside the mind and making it visible to everyone else. The thought leaves the head and becomes a thing out in the world that other people can stand in front of and recognise.
Representative Image
How art makes the invisible visible
When we look at any work of art, without even realising, we are really looking at someone’s turmoil of the heart and the gush of emotions within. A blues song lets us hear heartbreak, even if we have never met the singer. A child’s drawing of their family silently reveals who matters most to them, without a word of explanation. None of these describes the feeling. They show it without even speaking out loud, so that your mind recognises what another mind was holding.
Thai is relevant even in the modern use of design and creativity
We now live surrounded by visual art like infographics that make data readable at a single glance, memes that compress an entire mood into one image, and design that decides how an app feels before we read a word. It’s all about feeling and understanding it, and sometimes without even saying a word.
