The Art of Seeing:

This month’s The Art of Seeing will explore how a work of art can reach into the depths of soul and touch us in ways we often neglect to see and hear. The philosopher and mathematician Alfred North Whitehead wrote extensively on the effects of art upon the human senses and soul, observing that;

“Great art is the arrangement of the environment so as to provide for the soul vivid, but transient values, so that something new is discovered . . . the permanent realisation of values extending beyond its former self.”

He emphasised the importance of not just resting on the surface of what we see, but of moving through and beyond it. This movement through a work of art has a reciprocal effect: as we engage more deeply with what we behold, we too journey into hidden regions of the psyche and imagination that might otherwise remain unseen, and as we do so, the work of art revealed to us alters.

In this session, we will focus on a single 17th-century painting. Through its seemingly ordinary, secular subject matter, we will consider how the everyday can invite us to look beyond the surface—and what such deeper seeing might awaken or recover within us.