Say an artist creates a sculpture that invites the viewer to feel a sense of love and warmth.

Fine.

But wouldn’t it be more effective to smile warmly and to give the viewer a hug?

The thing is, part of the magic of art is in using specific materials to capture human experience. It’s about creating a compelling translation. Here is the story of imaginative space told with paint. Here is the embodiment of fear captured with wood and twine. Here is tension presented as melody.

It’s not about being direct and efficient.

It’s about exploring truth in a way that seems to become more real than reality. It’s about embracing a specific set of constraints in order to widen the scope of where we might go.