Theory 3: A Frame of Mind, from The Painter Who Lived Inside the Painting / Not Art Theory by Everybody the Artist
"How much life is actually art?"
We've been asking the question, "What is not art?" and so far, our querying has taught us a couple of things. First, art is not a thing; it's an experience. This is the only all-inclusive, totally comprehensive explanation that can account for the infinite variety of things we know and call artwork.
Second, most art is actually meant to be seen as life. Because art is an experience, it turns out it doesn't really matter if you are looking at a painting or a pineapple. Anything can do the work of art for us because the real work of art is a function of our perception. This means art is the implicit quality of all our experiences. And because life is experience, that means life is all art.
So, what is keeping implicit art from becoming our explicit view of things? In other words, why doesn't life always feel like art? Again, we need to return to our question: What is not art? You might say that asking this question puts you in a different frame of mind, with reality in perspective. When you put life in the frame, art is all you see because art is all it ever was. You only didn't notice it because you were living it.
We're totally consumed by art, but art always looks like reality when you get this close and personally caught up in it. That's why the frame is so important to us. It captures art; it shows art to us. The frame is the only thing that separates art from life.
