The following is excerpted from Linda Stratford’s book project, Art and the Search for Meaning. To read more about her book and other 2025 Creo Arts Projects, visit our projects page:

Creo Art Projects

“The farm was where Nick first started sketching. The penciled dreams of boys—rockets, outlandish cars, massed armies, imaginary cities, more baroque with detail each year. Then wilder textures, directly observed—the forest of hairs on a caterpillar’s back and the stormy weather maps in the grain of floorboards.” - From Richard Powers, The Overstory (2018)

In The Overstory, the boy Nick, later to become an art student, follows “stormy weather maps in the grain of floorboards” and “hairs on a caterpillar’s back,” mesmerized by visual complexities. Perhaps it is not unimportant that Nick discovers this visual wonder while young, before life’s fuller responsibilities become masters. But who has not as an adult experienced the emptying out of self while gazing at an open field? Who has not relinquished time, stretched out on a long waterfront? Who has never looked out a window only to enter complex, meandering thought?

Seeing exercises power over thinking. It invites focus, situates interest and stirs examination. The very root of the word “imagination” comes from an early French term “imaginacion,” meaning “mental picture”. The picture, the image — along with absorbed watchfulness in it — actually expands inner reflection rather than diminishes it.1

This transformational power of looking is strong enough that we routinely use the word “vision” to refer to aspirational traits in an effective leader. The transforming power of pensive looking is strong enough that, as writer and priest John O’Donohue explains, watchfulness can ‘stir the inner life with urgency’ and ‘dissolve cages that confine us’.2 Importantly, it is captivated looking that we are talking about. Transfixed seeing has power to move our inner world. O’Donohue describes attentive, immersive seeing as a process of “soul-awakening.”3 Rather than be passively absorbed by what we see when “captivated,” we move through a process of soul wakefulness.

Compelling items come to one’s field of vision all the time (such as the dashboard on the car showing it is time to get fuel!) but transfixed seeing is qualitatively different, holding power to “move the inner world”. The Creo project Art and the Search for Meaning stems from longing for meaning that has historically taken the curious and thoughtful to works of “art.”

But how do we distinguish between a “work of art” and other compelling items entering the field of vision?

Consider two images provided below, one an interesting piece driftwood, the other a sculpture by Henry Moore. What distinguishes one as a natural object and the other as a “work of art”?

Both arrest our attention visually. Both use materials and design derived from nature: its materials, lines, shape, textures, and tones. Both play with design elements derived from nature: balance, rhythm, proportion and scale, emphasis, and harmony. But only one may be properly called a “work of art.” Why?

Works of art — from prehistoric cave paintings, to Jackson Pollock’s gestural pieces, to contemporary installations — hold this in common: they are the product of human expression. What we refer to as a “work of art” requires human expression.

But if inventive human expression were enough to qualify an object as a work of art, wouldn’t any clever billboard we pass on the highway qualify as “art”? What are we still missing?

Looking at more artwork will help answer this question. When an artist employs abstraction—the chiseling down to essentials—the artist’s goal is not limited to depiction, likeness, or illustration. Take the case of Brancusi’s Bird in Space, pictured above. Absent a straightforward depiction of a bird, the spectator is more fully present to simple, shining, falcon-shaped brass. In this case, as the piece tapers upwards, it is possible to imagine impending, soaring flight. And by imagining impending, soaring flight, to that what has the spectator been invited? The spectator has been invited to more than a bird, but in fact, to the possibility of larger experiences of freedom, escape, and even transcendence.

Take another case, that of Monet’s painterly responses to his landscape surroundings.

While Monet was a naturalist, his works are anything but naturalistic; dips and dives and mutating vegetative surfaces tumble rather than straightforwardly position a viewer before clear illustration. What is the point? It has been said Monet’s expressive gestural works suggest the spirituality of the artist’s communion with nature, a communion “mysterious and infinite.” 4 By spending time with Monet’s work, to what is the spectator invited? The spectator is invited to more than landscape, but in fact, to something wider: vicarious communion with the wonder of nature.

These examples suggest we add to our definition of visual art, beyond what has been stated (expression based on nature, and expression that is human), expression that invites us to larger meaning.

Pilgrims exploring Creo’s Art and the Search for Meaning material follow eight guiding questions as they further their ability to explore works of art:

• What is my first response?

• What materials are in use (oil paint, found objects, woven cloth, etc.)?

• What is its form (overall composition, line, shape, size, texture, color, light effects, etc.)?

• What is its subject matter (if known)?

• What is its context (e.g. social, historical, biographical)?

• Does the work appeal to my spiritual, moral or social reasoning in a particular way?

• What meaningful connections occur within this work?

• What, if anything, do I find spiritually charged about the work?

These guiding questions rest on an understanding of art as expression that stirs reflective human attentiveness; and beckons wider experience and meaning. Whether it is to think pensively, to encounter the beautiful, to be challenged, or to simply stand amazed, transfixed seeing holds the capacity to move our inner world.

Expanding one’s exposure to, and ability to look at, works of art opens experiences of transfixed looking. Expanding one’s exposure to, and ability to look at, works of art also opens up possibilities of more intentionally integrating visual art into Christian exploration and thought, whether alone or within a community of other pilgrims. That is the invitation of Art and the Search for Meaning.

Linda Stratford, Ph.D is a historian, writer and educator whose chief mission is to stir up thoughtful discussion about art. Originally a student of studio art, her career trajectory branched into teacher-scholar, creating innovative higher education deliverables such as Asbury University’s Paris Semester overseas; co-founding The Association of Scholars of Christianity in the History of Art (ASCHA); and joining Creo Arts as Scholar-in-Residence.