For over a decade I studied art philosophy (what makes a work of art a work of art) with my mentor and teacher, Martin Rabe (*1942), artist and philosopher. Our weekly sessions – wonderful exercises for my brain – ended in 2025. I am now working through the various files of notes I have accrued during this time and combining with my recently acquired wisdom from other sources.

As an artist I am convinced art is made by humans for humans. And as an artist I want to know what makes us tick – what makes me want to make art, where the images come from and how art works on us.

I have been working closely with the writings of Dr. Sharon Blackie for several years now, and am currently on Angharad Wynne’s “Feather, Fire, Stone and Bone” yearlong course on animism. Animism is the earliest form of spirituality for humans, it is evidence based, meaning to do what helps life to flourish. I am constantly, not really surprised, elated might be a better word, how these two worlds connect and come to the same conclusions.

There was a pleasing synchronicity when I realised my art philosophy notes from 2015 mapped exactly onto a conversation between Angharad Wynne and the writer Manda Scott this February (2026).

I’m going to try and combine these worlds in this essay, I hope you’ll find it interesting.

Beginning with my German learning: 

As humans we contain both nature and spirit, we have our free will, we are not tied to the laws of nature and can reflect our actions.  

The yardstick for meaning is the human being – i.e. we are completely meaningful, we are the most meaningful being on the planet. We have understanding, reason and can make judgements. There is nothing without meaning within us, and as Plotinus discovered only the known can relate, so we cannot relate to something without meaning. Ok, this thought might be a bit challenging in this day and age, but please bear with me.

We are each more than we know about ourselves, and knowing this makes us curious, moves us to seek knowledge of the world, knowledge of ourselves.  We are at work in the world, and the world works within us.

The other, i.e. you reading this, is always more than I have perceived about you. No-one can look after themselves without the other, we need each other – I need you to read this essay, you need me, if not to write it, then to help you think thoughts you might not have thought without me. Each of us is changed by meeting each other. I recognise something in you that I don’t have, you might see something in me that you don’t have.

 We all have

-          Instinct: knowledge before all experience

-          Imagination: knowledge based on a pre-image

-          Inspiration: knowledge from “the gods”

As an artist I can work very close to nature and also move away from nature into abstraction (though, I’d like to point out, every work of art is an abstraction, because it is not reality, it has withdrawn from reality). As an artist I can be inspired by the unconscious, where the archetypes are, where the unreal is the role model – these images arise from within me, whereas working from the images around me – these images are from outside myself.

There are two possibilities of making artwork:

-          Mimetically copied art (nature inspired – made using images outside myself)

-          Poetic, self-creative art (abstraction – made using images that arise from within me, from my subconscious, from the imaginal world)

Plato, very generally speaking, was about the platonic shapes, geometry, abstractions – things we can’t find in nature. Aristoteles said, that’s all well and good, but we also need our experiences in the world. We need to work with both – inner and outer images.

C. G. Carus in his “Psyche. Zur Entwicklungs geschichte der Seele” (Psyche. About the developmental story of the soul) 1846 -1860, was convinced it was a mistake to put a wall between our unconscious and our conscious, moving us to cut off our soul, removing that which lies outside our consciousness. All soul-life rests on the unconscious, we need to see the soul-life as the basis of consciousness, to reconstruct our being spiritually back from the solely conscious being to the unconscious being.

Stages of Perception and Consciousness 
(by Martin Rabe)

1)      Our wakeful consciousness grasps perceptions, as it were, under the sovereignty of the EGO, the “I”, endowed with free will and its alert psychic organism. It represents, it behaves officially, it is the everlasting subjective.

2)      The experiencing unconsciousness in it (1), what is perceived expresses itself in the subject, bypassing the sovereignty of the EGO, the “I”. It expresses itself in itself  and about itself in the subject. However, it not only speaks about itself, but also sinks everything “in an ordered manner” within us. Which is why actual memory rests within it. It is incapable of forgetting.
The organ of forgetting and of scholastic learning belongs to the wakeful consciousness.

3)      The deep subconscious is genetically transmitted. It does not actually belong to the subject. Something completely different form the EGO of the waking consciousness resides in it. While the EGO is clouded by the source of error that is the subjective perspective of chance, and the experiencing unconscious the deep subconscious is absolutely objective, true and reliable. No memory rests within it, because it does not have to judge on the basis of memories, but creates every judgement anew.

Carus seems to be referring to this “unconscious” in his writing. We know it as the “inner voice of conscience” (Socrates’ referred to it as our “daemons”, we could also call it our “spirit guide”). His statements are like a seal of evidentiary experience. I need to be able to enter my subconscious – but consciously.

In their conversation Angharad and Manda discussed dreaming – as stepping out of conscious reality and not ego led.

Manda said shamanic practice shows our culture only allows a tiny fragment of all possible reality. I can pair that statement with Willi Baumeister’s (1889 – 1955) discussion in his book “Wirklichkeiten, in denen wir leben” (Realities, in which we live), where he states there are many different realities, and yours is quite different to mine, even if we are sitting at the same table at the same time.

I said earlier, “instinct is knowledge before all experience.” Manda and Angharad were both clear that we have lost our old knowledge (instinct) and need to reclaim it.

They spoke about our “heart mind” and our “head mind”. How our “head mind” is often faster, quicker to denounce – you can’t do this, it’s unreasonable, why do you think you are good enough? Here I would make the combination to wakeful consciousness – this is our head mind. This is our ego.

René Descartes (1596 – 1650) said, “I think therefore I am” – which is incorrect (he corrected it in a later essay). It should read, “I am, therefore I think”.

Our “heart mind” is often more subtle, but has different qualities and textures than the “head mind”. I would put the heart mind in our deep subconscious – true and reliable, not of us, but of the web of life (Martin wrote: “it does not actually belong to the subject”). Unfortunately, we have very effectively quashed it, and to reignite this conversation, this truth, requires time and trust. We need to re-learn our connection to our instinct.

The three pillars of the “heart mind” are

-          Gratitude

-          Compassion

-          Joyful curiosity

Angharad and Manda discussed “imagination”. Now, in my art philosophy studies, I was taught imagination is the after-image. Like when you look at a candle flame, shut your eyes, and see it behind your eyelids.

“Is it just my imagination?” They referred to it as being in connection with the web of life. Again, this works – because the images we see arising within us, those spirit guides, or daemons, would be from the imaginal world – that world of images that lies between the world of “reality” and the world in our heads. So as an artist when I am working from my imagination, I am working from images that have arisen in this imaginal world, are after-images so to speak, of the images living in this space. Imagination is feeling into connection to all things – the full range of what is possible.

The question arises: can we live without believing in anything? The everyday has been disenchanted. The world we have created suggests the possibility of a perfect present. We are constantly faced with images showing us how to live a “perfect life”. However, as humans we have a basic need for more than the every day. We need “the possible”- and this is where hope comes in.

I believe, like Angharad and Manda in the web of life – that constantly renewing energy at work in everything. I keep hearing people saying “the world would be a better place if there were no humans in it”. I disagree. We are here to appreciate the world. James Hillman said we are “homo appreciates”. That is what I try to do when painting from nature. To appreciate and elevate what is to a new level, a higher plane, creating in my small way, a new universe, to align with the original use of the word “creative” – to create a universe in the finite, as the divine created in the infinite.

Considering the web of life… nature or an energy constantly creating, and we are all intrinsically part of it, then look at this thought:

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775 – 1854) divided nature into two:

•          Natura naturata: the nature we see, the created, given surrounding us
•           Natura naturans: creating nature, working, making, moving, an energy of nature

As well as nature, that is how it is, nature is always productive and is always creating.

This productive nature is important for us humans, it by-passes our consciousness and expresses itself within us in ways we are not consciously aware of. It communicates with our unconscious - we don’t know what it is doing, but it is always changing, always influencing. We are always becoming – even down to very cells in our body.

Goethe said, “that which is moving is alive, that which has become is dead.”

Manda and Angharad were clear that being in service to the web of life is what humanity is for. Asking for help and saying thank you is part of that. We humans are the hands of all that is in the world and should care for it. Isn’t that a lovely thought (just don’t watch the news)?

“Being a living part of an infinitely unfurling emergent process that is utterly magical in unfolding and being in service to that” to use Manda Scott’s exact words.

Our core wounding is our belief in separability, belief that separation can be a thing. Life energy is fluid and permeable and unites us all with each other were some of the final words of their discussion.

Here I’d like to add some thoughts from my art philosophy studies. So keeping the above thought in the back of your mind, let’s go down this avenue together:

By means of colour, shape and movement, art determines what makes us human. This humanity always and only points to freedom.

“Without art we would not be able to survive the every day, because art stretches the ordinary and shows the possible, that goes above and beyond the mundane.
This is a case for feeling happy.”

Hans Blumenberg, 1920 - 1996, philosopher

It is very difficult to say what a work of art is. To help us define what makes a work of art a work of art we need criteria.

They are NOT rules, but open and free. They are not a dogma, but there to help. After all, its no use if you have a car, but don’t know how to drive. (Try asking someone in the art world which criteria they use to evaluate art and you’ll hear some interesting answers)

If we remain in the purely subjective (and art is subjective) we remain alone in our opinion (I like/don’t like it). This leads to loneliness, one of the core issues challenging us today, born of separation. Ah – what did Manda say, one of our core wounds was the belief in separability? Didn’t we come to the conclusion that we are all united and need to communicate?

Looking at art is a process of communication with the self (my subjective response) and communication with others.

• Questioning: do I like what I am looking at (the subjective response, communication with myself, here I can learn about myself, the more works of art I look at, the more I understand there are many more ways of seeing the world than my own point of view, its very broadening and anti-radical)
• Questioning with a tool for discussing the artwork that goes beyond the purely subjective (criteria such as those written down by Immanuel Kant in his “The Critique of Pure Reason”). Whichever criteria you use, they need to point the way to freedom, not a set of rules, but open to interpretation.
• Discussion/Questioning of thoughts and interpretations of the work with others using criteria as a framework/tool.

Thus, the JUDGEMENT we arrive at is made by applying criteria and discussion. This judgement is no longer arbitrary, but universal. The judgement is subjective, but not entirely personal, striving for a universal judgement grounded in individual feeling.

Without criteria to give us a framework for making a judgement we remain not only lonely, but cannot make a judgement that stands up to discussion with others. We need to move from the subjective experience into the universal experience.

Criteria point to the goal of freedom, they protect freedom, and are not rules, but aids to perception. Criteria give us a basis for discussion and decision making - in communication with others in peace and freedom.

Art is a reflection of humanity in its myriads of shapes and forms - we need to be able to “enter” the work and find ourselves in it. We learn by asking questions - in dialogue with others (Socrates: maieutic, the art of “midwifery” – birthing ideas).

We need to create ourselves in freedom - the subject is free because we can reflect our thoughts and actions. By doing so we create our Self, we can say “I”. The self is formed by a combination of mind (love), spirit (belief) and will (work).

Works of art help us learn about ourselves, reflect and understand what moves our mind, brightens our spirit and makes our will work.

We have been given three “powers”:

•           The gift of movement
•           The gift of speech
•           The gift of form: we need to give shape to our lives, our surroundings.

These are all POWERS OF COMMUNICATION.

Life is all about communication: with each other, with the world.

The heightened form of this communication is the creation of beauty. If we were communicating with free, meaningful and open forms in love and peace, I wonder where we would be today?

As an artist I am aware we are all connected, we cannot be without the other. Going back to what I said before (originally from Hegel), we can only learn about ourselves from the other. By understanding what you have or how we differ, I can learn about myself. We cannot survive without the other. I need you to look at my artwork, for it to be seen. If no-body sees it, it doesn’t exist.

To conclude, both my studies of art philosophy in German and my introduction to some of the thinking behind animism come to the same conclusion: there is much more than we can understand, there is much more than can be rationally explained, the universe and everything in between is not rationally explicable, but we can tune into it and learn from instinct and imagination. As human beings we are part of nature and need to care for it – everything is about communication, with each other, with the world, with everything in it.

© Sibylle Laubscher