LSD-2-Art-From-The-Heart

Art From the Heart

by Marz Zafe
Former Board Member, SanibLakas Foundation
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[This article was carried in full in 2000 by the now defunct Earthlite Sparks & Reflections. Zafe is a professional painter.]

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THE PHRASE "Art From the Heart" emerged in my mind during the New Moon of September 2001, I was then designing the logo for our newly-formed Sanibkulay Visual Arts Group, and I started by making doodles from the letter “S,” the first letter of our name. At that time, I had no mental picture of what that logo would turn out to be, but the freehand round movements of my pen “chanced” upon the shape of the painter’s palette. And then I sensed a different feeling. I felt energized. I felt happy that my hand was actually being guided.

I showed the “S”-palette sketch to mem­bers of the group and asked for their com­ments and suggestions. One suggested that I extend the upper curve of the letter “S” to make the figure also represent a bird, a known symbol for free­dom. Another suggested that I draw the letter “S” as a paintbrush with a curving brushstroke to go with the palette. So I made new sketches putting in their suggestions.

Days later, I was staring at that evolving symbol and some­thing else appeared before my eyes – the entire figure looked like a heart, the anatomical one! Aside both palette and bird, it was also a heart, the universal symbol for feeling. A new flash of energy came to me, along with an insight—art works are created with the help of our eyes and hands, but most of all, they come from the heart. This is the part of art that cannot be taught.

It just has to be awaken­ed in the heart of each indi­vidual.

This made me appreciate more these words from the Credo of the SanibKulay Visual Arts Group: “Art is the expression of the innermost human feelings and insights, the physical expression of one’s own emotional and spiritual breath, throb and pulse.”

So, you are a practicing artist because you express your feelings from the heart in a way that has form and beauty.

This definition of art may be as old as the figures of ani­mals painted and/or carved on cave walls such as those at Las­caux,France, which date from 15,000 to 10,000 B.C.

Cave paintings in Lascaux, France "may be as old as the definition of art itself." Zafe, co-founder of Sanib-Sining, says one is a practicing artist "if he or she expresses his or her feelings from the heart in a way that has form and beauty."

There were also carvings of gods and goddesses, fertility symbols, and other figures which, in the mind of those artists, were relevant to their lives and mass survival.

There were also the masks for rituals and spirit dances, an art form that was common among important types of ancient and indigenous visual art expressions.

All of them were art­ists, they projected what they felt and expressed this in dif­ferent forms. There were no “intellectual trimmings” in their art works. There was freedom in express­ing one’s beliefs and feelings. Their concentration was on how to har­monize their lives with the streams of Mother Nature.

Then, this flowed across different periods, from the eme­rgence of civilizations in Me­sop­otamia and Egypt, thru the Renaissance, up to the pres­ent-day New Age.

Art became complicated with the rapid succession of styles that have continued to interplay. Critiques, debates, increased intellectualization, mo­nopoly by the elite, the em­ergence of the “art industry.” Many artists thought they could only be artists in the real sense if they obeyed the intel­lectuals and engaged in com­petition in the market being operated by businessmen ref­lecting and promoting the lat­ter’s own interests.

But as our Credo says, never comprehend it fully.” Too much in­tellectual­ization can only diminish free expression and ex­hi­laration.” We of Sa­nibKulay “would rath­er create and appreciate than cri­ti­cize and debate.”

I feel the urge to do art and to do much of it.

Human life is short, but art can be one aspect of every per­son’s immortality. Long af­ter the artist shall have gone back to earth as ash and dust, his or her artworks can re­main al­ive forever in the memory, in the heart and in the spirit, of the Humankind that lives on.

MARZ leads Sanib-Pinta activity during "Rise
in Bataan" in Balanga City in April, 2001...........

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