Mardle, Gwen2014-08-182014-08-181971http://hdl.handle.net/10092/9508http://dx.doi.org/10.26021/4104All art, we believe, is a testament of a singular experience of life. The man who makes such a testament through an art form is seeking to renew that experience, its time, its place, his own person in relation to it. It is the artist who is wanting more than just the “forward” movement of ordinary life. He wants stillness, a time of “reflection” to draw together all the tremors, all the insights of his experiences and then to hold it away from himself so he might see in its ordered wholeness some measure of truth or understanding, some fulfilment of aesthetic qualities. And, even as the man himself was the nerve centre to the forward living experience, so too will he be the pivot of his reflective artistry. However, his engagement will have lost its unformulated excitement, and, as if distilled away by the time and retrospection, the artist will be able to meditate more freely on the source and the meaning of his experience, and on those forms it takes in his reflection and that it will subsequently in his work of art.enCopyright Gwen MardleTheses / Dissertations