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Anthony Taylor Dunn

Art and Poetry

Anthony Taylor Dunn

Art has value in society. It is among the key components of civilization and one of the collective repositories of culture spanning across space and time. It represents aspects of the human experience and suggests meaning for existence. Art offers pragmatic utility as children who produce art at an early age begin to learn about themselves and others and aids brain development in other cognitive areas.

Art is transformative. Mind, soul, and spirit are equally affected, manifested and expressed in positive areas, such as social change. How it does this exactly is mysterious. Art expands our world view and our consciousness, like taking a journey to an unfamiliar place created by the artist. To repurpose a quote from Mark Twain on travel as an analogy of the process:

“[Art] is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”

Where does art come from? As an artist, my experience is very much like receiving radio wave transmissions from a numinous origin. Likewise, the words I use to create literature seem to initially appear as vapor before the liquid ink solidifies on paper – the same thing but in different form. When I find words are not the appropriate vehicle, visual art offers me non-verbal spiritual conveyance.

Art glorifies God. Ancient Christians felt compelled to animate the Word to enhance and satisfy the Christian experience, and iconography was a way the seeker could transmute into the other realm like the Flammarion engraving of the traveler who peeked under the edge of the firmament. My artistic talents are gifts from God, and use of these gifts is my offering to God. On this point it is important to note my art is not is not merely an end to a means; in other words, my art is not created for its own sake as something to be idolized. Edmond Rostand had it half right when he said: “I am what I am because early in life I decided that I would please at least myself in all things.” Shelley may have been more on track with his “Ozymandias” as even the greatest achievements and the artists that produce them are subject to the second law of thermodynamics. Simply put, my art is a form of prayer.   

I have yielded to the small, still, quiet frequency that compels me to so urgently break the silence. I want to simply share the joy I discovered in the evergreen forest where the songbirds sing in pools of morning light and dusk of the fallen day, and then take that moment and press it in a book like a little wildflower until the flower, the book, and the author return to the dust of stars.

“Have you entered the springs of the sea?
Or have you walked in search of the depths?
Have the gates of death been revealed to you?
Or have you seen the doors of the shadow of death?
Have you comprehended the breadth of the earth?
Tell Me, if you know all this.

“Where is the way to the dwelling of light?
And darkness, where is its place,
That you may take it to its territory,
That you may know the paths to its home?
Do you know it, because you were born then,
Or because the number of your days is great?

“Have you entered the treasury of snow,
Or have you seen the treasury of hail,
Which I have reserved for the time of trouble,
For the day of battle and war?
By what way is light diffused,
Or the east wind scattered over the earth?

“Who has divided a channel for the overflowing water,
Or a path for the thunderbolt,
To cause it to rain on a land where there is no one,
A wilderness in which there is no man;
To satisfy the desolate waste,
And cause to spring forth the growth of tender grass?
Has the rain a father?
Or who has begotten the drops of dew?
From whose womb comes the ice?
And the frost of heaven, who gives it birth?
The waters harden like stone,
And the surface of the deep is frozen.

– Job 38:16-30

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Anthony Taylor Dunn

Living In

Charlotte, NC