This is significant because a home can be seen as a metaphor for shelter or a cradle that holds you and gives you stability. It is a consistent aspect of human behaviour to want a corner of the earth as a place that you can call home. Whether its a piece of tarpaulin or a palace over your head. And art reflects something of our human experience back to us.
Approximately 44,000 years ago early cave dwellers selected ‘home’ that had warmth, shape and offered shelter and safety. They decorated the walls of their home with cave art. The paintings were visual representations that held meaning and communicated a message or recorded an event.
In how many conversations have you asked the question: “where do you live?” I feel the canvas of home is a container for hopes and dreams, imagination and illusion. We create a physical material structure that represents our place in the world. We may build it, shape it and place our stamp within it. This creates a partnership of within and without.
Art becomes something much bigger than a picture on a wall. Art can reflect our unconscious.
We need to see the bigger picture of home as canvas first. It is a colour palette including elements, symbolism, texture, patterns, shape and design in relationship to the occupants. We need to see the home, inclusive of personal creativity and art, in totality, as an organic, sustainable whole before we can include suggestions of appropriate art.
Art weaves its message gently through the eyes into our unconscious to influence us. It can play with our emotions and transport us to a different time. It weaves a bridge between the seen and unseen through its own agency.
Art is frequently hung to fill a blank space on the wall, it may be suspended by a fridge magnet or given pride of place in a room. Yet rarely there is a consideration for how the content may impact the home environment and the occupants. What is the veiled message it contains?
My intention in this visually exploited culture in which we live is to slow us down and draw attention to what may be relevant and important inert and imagery. To open up a conversation around art, creativity and the positive benefits of recognising the influence art can have on the pre-existing canvas of your home in its relationship with Feng Shui.
Cheers Diane
