Art and Intuition

Borderlines and Boundaries: Reflections and Refractions of the Gaze in Painting Today
Pat Paxson



What is intuition, where does it come from, how does it interact with making and viewing art, how can it be ‘encouraged’? These are questions raised by Paxson in the edifying pages of Art and Intuition. Using ideas of Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Anton Ehrenzweig and others, she braids them together so that they dovetail in a surprising and informative manner. This results in helpful ideas for encouraging the emergence of intuition, that intriguing but invisible mental process.

“My original aim for undertaking this research was to explore, reenergize, and integrate ideas pertaining to a particular stage in the process of image making, the stage that is characterized by an absorbed, or “unthought,” state of mind. The ideas have developed a broader base and wider applicability than originally envisioned, becoming an investigation into the roots of intuition,” Paxson shares. “There are ways to visualize how intuition may happen in the mind in spite of the fact that this is not an arena into which we can peer closely.”

Art and Intuition works with the idea of the unthought stage of image making as being one specific example of intuition in order to illuminate the broader idea of intuition. Throughout the pages, readers will see that enhancing our ability to visualize the process of intuition may help people to encourage its appearance, erratic and unpredictable as that may always be.