Art is Life

This group is about books. It is about art. This group is for people who see art as something that lives and breathes. The painter Mark Rothko said that a person looking at his paintings might gain the same spiritual experience he had while creating the paintings. This group is for people who think of art as a guiding principle in their lives. This group is for people who think of literary voices and characters as being "real." This group is for people who feel rapture in the presence of art. This group is for people who recognize that art gives us the power of transcendence.

My name is Theresa Williams. I'm an author, and I'm starting this group as a way of connecting with people who feel the same passion for art that I do. I am a university lecturer and I want to learn from others. I experience the world primarly through "feeling." As Theodore Roethke said, "We think by feeling. What is there to know?" I am coming to discover that the dichotomy of the heart and the intellect is not as I once thought: I am coming to see that "feeling" is not separate from intelligence but an important form of intelligence. The Native Americans have a term for this: "Seeing With The Eye of the Heart."

I hope this can be a place where we can shed our hard outer shells and share what we know about the beauty and terror of life.

I'm interested in having deep and real conversations about art and life.

Here you are welcome to express your opinions and even to disagree, but, please, this is not a war zone. Do be respectful, gracious, and giving.


The photograph is Walt Whitman's butterfly.