Seeing is Knowing

Seeing is Knowing, 60 x 108 inches, acrylic & mixed media on panel, ©2016 Deidre Adams

This is the next painting in the series Metaphors & Mysteries. My titles come from recent readings in “Metaphors We Live By,” by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (University of Chicago Press, 1980, with Afterword, 2003) . I’ll leave you with a quote from Chapter 30, Understanding (p. 231):

When people who are talking don’t share the same culture, knowledge, values, and assumptions, mutual understanding can be especially difficult. Such understanding is possible through the negotiation of meaning. To negotiate meaning with someone, you have to become aware of and respect both the differences in your backgrounds and when these differences are important. You need enough diversity of cultural and personal experience to be aware that divergent world views exist and what they might be like. You also need patience, a certain flexibility in world view, and a generous tolerance for mistakes, as well as a talent for finding the right metaphor to communicate the relevant parts of unshared experiences or to highlight the shared experiences while deemphasizing the others. Metaphorical imagination is a crucial skill in creating rapport and communicating the nature of unshared experience.

Lately I think a willingness to negotiate meaning is sorely lacking in our discourse. Exploring the reasons for this is beyond what I’m willing to go into here, but I will say that I myself am not immune to the urge to shut down my tolerance when confronted with ideas radically different from my own. I like to think that artwork has a function in the furthering of shared understanding, even if at a minimum merely providing some alternative ways of looking at the world.

Here are some detail views of Knowing is Seeing: