Art of May Lesser | Preface

	An Artist Looks at Dreams		Home \| Contents \| Preface page 5 <previous \| next>
	There is much in science that is elusive and best portrayed by an artist. An artist makes connections that are seemingly unrelated to objects or images in a way that stimulates the imagination. The way in which an artist combines various images and patterns can amaze, startle and enlighten the viewer for a new understanding. With creative energies to transform familiar objects into something different and often unrecognizable, the artist makes these changes by taking an object out of its usual setting, isolating it, viewing it at an unusual angle or using exaggerated lighting or color. There is no barrier between the believable and unbelievable, the familiar and the fantasy, the conscious and unconscious. The viewer like the artist can be the child and can let go of logic and its limitations and enter the region of visions and dreams. "Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist after he grows up!", Pablo Picasso comments. He also remarked that when one paints, one is "mother" generating and accepting, only when one is finished, does one become "father", judging and criticizing. The reverse will make one not paint. When a painting is good, one is speechless and there is a deep feeling of quietness, of being spent, which excludes the outside world. And as the dreamer, the artist does his work in isolation. He is all alone. Only his own inner sense of honesty guides him. I believe that this art work can loosen up the medical scientists and laypersons alike. So much of the physicians training is in such clean environments, especially today with standardized patient actors, who are not messy or disorganized as real sick patients are. With the computer all done with punching keys, the extensions of their early altruism, of feeling for a patient, is hard to have compassion for the patient actor who obviously is very healthy and we don not increase our tactile sense on the computer, we do not feel strongly for people who are behind the glass screen, it is not first hand enough to get out involvement physically. Life is not so organized and clean and spoon feed to us; we have to sort out our experiences and so organize them into some wisdom, some philosophy to guide our lives. I think that this experience of studying our dreams will enrich our lives and enlarge our minds.		Contents: The Art of May Lesser \| An Artist Looks at Dreams Preface Preface page 1 - "I feel like I am being a traitor to..." Preface page 2 - "I had left the ivory tower of the art..." Preface page 3 - "Out of our private gropings and self..." Preface page 4 - "In a dream, if there is a child held..." Preface page 5 - "There is much in science that is..." Preface page 6 - "The symbolic use of animals in..." Preface page 7 - "With the medical series, I served as..."