The convoluted darkness of imagination part II

The mind is a strange place I find. Maybe its because we grow up in the hard light of reality without any understanding of why we exist that we create our own context as a means of explaining our existance, but in doing so we populate our minds with a vast clutter of obscure, random and irrational ingredients that defy our own understanding. In otherwords, we are strangers to ourselves, even in our own minds because we live inside a mental cocoon of personal understandings and fabricated context, based on myriad memories and misunderstandings. Sure we have a rough idea of who we are, a mental sketch, but this is a construct, an illusion based on desire, wishful thinking and fear.

When we are confronted with ourselves outside of our own constructed context, we suddenly find ourselves facing a stranger. Like when you hear your own voice on a recording, or see your face on a photograph instead of in a mirror. The photographer Man Ray once demonstrated how little we actually see of ourselves when he took a self portrait then added a simple ink line cross over his face to high light how crooked it actually was. Until you saw the uncompromising lines of the superimposed cross, you never comprehended the lack of actual symmetry in a human face. At least, I never did, and I was drawing and looking at human beings all day long.

So, does an artist actually understand all this and take it into account or is art merely another form of self deception? I think art must be some form of self analysis if it is to be considered a form of self expression. In other to express yourself, you must have some understanding of where your expression comes from. If you didn't, then you'd be no better than an automaton.

Unless art is preprogrammed into our genes, then it must be a product of minds grown dark and convoluted with imagination born of self deception. In other words, in art we try to express ourselves, but our self expression is based on the compromises we have evolved since birth in order to make sense of our existence.

I personally doubt that art is self expression, rather I think art is always a means to understanding reality. Like when you argue to clarify in your own mind what you actually think.