“The Information Age has killed our access to not only mystery, but our souls” – an essay by Eva Lewarne

"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science."
― Albert Einstein

Eva Lewarne believes that artists play many roles in society, but she believes that one of their major ones is to be preservers of mystery.

What is a mystery?

“A mystery is a secret, a riddle, or an enigma” she says.

“Mystery is not the absence meaning, but the presence of more meaning than we can comprehend and pregnant with possibilities.

The very term mystery is the animating force, the reason why every man and woman gets up in the morning, and steps out into this wild world.

Once you get to the stage where you can be comfortable with possibilities and not facts, the search for meaning in life becomes more enjoyable, the stuff of being alive, especially if you can accept that you don’t know everything, and will never know everything because there is always another perspective to every situation.

A lot of the things that I once considered true have revealed themselves in my life to be false, so that I can safely assume that any of my beliefs could be thrown on their heads in the very next instance. Just peering into the mystery is enough for me to enjoy the ride.”

Please enjoy this essay by Eva Lewarne
[originally published to Eva’s blog: www.evalewarne.com]

Art and the Information Age

It was interesting for me to observe how people relate to paintings during my exhibition.

 

Sometimes people would walk in, take a quick spin around and come up to ask me what I wanted to say, ignoring the artists statement pinned to the wall and titles of works even.

“This is very interesting,” I heard, “what does it mean?” and they’d look up expectantly at me. to be entertained and shared information with.

We, as a society, have become gluttons for information and are unhappy if for a moment the information snake is not feeding us. It takes time and patience to stand in front of a visual piece, to take it in, to understand it, to appreciate it.

The Information Age, hand in hand with the Technology Age, has killed our access to not only mystery but our souls (that can no longer be heard above the din of network static). We have officially become robots powered by megabytes of data….No wonder visual art is so hard to digest.

Where are the ready words?

Well some artists obligingly try to add them to the visual work, but alas often without success because people don’t know how to think anymore. They want it all laid out for them, so any words missing from a sequence are too much trouble to try to understand. Even metaphors are often misunderstood, and take too much time to understand. Good literature suffers as a result.

Wake up folks to how computers are making us addicts of information, depended on external sources —  just what this political climate likes, lobotomized and soulless candidates at the polls. With soul comes compassion, with compassion and soul stirrings an understanding of beauty and love, no use in a fascist society powered by fear.

Visual arts have become a commodity to be bargained with, no longer a voice of humanity’s conscience….very sad.

That voice needs space to be accessed, just like paintings need space and time to effect the viewer and a quiet mind to be understood. We are tuned into fast information gluttony, and are too afraid to actually stop long enough to appreciate the visual – let alone see what it has to say. As a result we are enamored with Hirst and diamond skulls, very appropriate for this age.

 

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About the author

Eva Lewarne was born in Poland and came to Canada after completing high school there. In Canada she attended U of T, then OCAD, majoring in Fine Art. It seems she has been painting forever, and her theme is something she claims a muse dictates through her and that she is not aware of until a body of works emerges. This last body of work Enigma and Illusion are influenced by her many years of meditation practice in Zen and Tibetan Buddhism.

Learn more about her paintings: www.evalewarne.com
and photography: www.evalew.com

 

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