Trust the Hands

What if you do not know what to do? It is fine to say the most efficient line between two points is a straight line and that if you know in advance what you are striving for it is much easier to achieve it.  But you do not know exactly what you are looking for so how can you draw that straight line? Trust the hands, they will know what to do. The hands find things all the time. They can dig and scratch and rummage around and will always find something. It isn’t finding that is hard, it is accepting what is found that takes wisdom.  Our hands are our bodies, there is wisdom in the body, watch and learn.

Some would say that you are working intuitively, feeling your way along.  But this is not is not quite the same thing. The hands are sensitive to touch, texture and pressure differences. They provide feedback to the brain in much the same way as the eyes do. The hands are an overlooked resource.  We are so adapted to the expectation that reason and logic should govern everything we do. The wonder of art is that it does not need to be either reasonable or logical.  Nor does it have to be purely emotional and intuitive. The hands give us a third option. We can literally excavate the truth of art. It is thinking with the hands. 

We are talking manual labor. this is a physical process that requires great effort.  In effect, we discover our art as a kind of cross breeding of substance, mind and touch.  Each element gives equally to the whole. We observe, we engage we trust. What we receive is is a pathway, a story of illumination and insight. The point is not to provide answers but to ponder questions.

Think of all the things that are hand made, not just art. These are enduring things. To be sure, it is not mindless exploration, just looking with all our faculties.  If the mind cannot resolve something maybe the hands can.