orsi [cowell-lehoczky]

THE 7TH JOHN RUSKIN PRIZE: FROM THE EYE TO THE HAND

​

​My application

​

Ruskin says:  “The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see.” He considered his own drawing and painting - from a geological specimen to an Alpine scene or the architecture of Venice - principally as his route to truly seeing and recording the world or, in the case of the enormous diagrams with which he illustrated his lectures for example, to encouraging others properly to see it and thus to enrich their lives as productive members of society.

 

There is an important agency between perception and creation, though: A creator-artist should do more, than just recording the world. (A good camera can achieve that in an instant, and the world has changed significantly since Ruskin’s time.) For me, an artwork is born from a thought and made to provoke thought and emotions. Not quite like “encouraging others to properly see”, rather to see from a different perspective: Artworks are created to widen horizons in my opinion. There must be a freedom of perception as there should be a freedom of expression.

’Seeing’- to me, as an artist-, is actually picking out what is truly important from the huge amount of visual information out there. Then ‘creating’ is to arrange these references - as visual metaphors - into a clear, discernible narrative that best conveys abstract ideas into a message that should mean a lot more, than the original items themselves managed to achieve. The purpose is to evoke emotions instantaneously, while also to encourage thoughts to flow freely. So, making a visual artwork - I agree with Ruskin - is to help others see, so they can create their own understanding.