The Moray Art Centre: A Highland Vision of High Art

by Tom Cook is a Director of Alternatives, St James’s Church, Piccadilly, London

The Moray Art Centre Project at Forres, Scotland is located in a landscape that wouldn’t seem unfamiliar to residents of the mythical highland village of Brigadoon which was visible to the outside world for only one day every one hundred years. The Art Centre Project is seeking a bit more visibility as an art education centre with a difference.

The project is the inspiration of New Yorker, Randy Klinger, who has been teaching the visual arts at Findhorn since 1992. Findhorn is situated on a sea surrounded peninsula which is easily accessible to duned beaches, rolling hills, forests and rushing rivers. A cornucopia of inspiration only 40 minutes drive from the airport at Inverness where artist and teacher alike can engage with natural beauty and take refuge from the pressures of the art marketplace.

Randy’s concept of the arts centre is of a place where visual artists will be able to connect with teachers from many different artistic disciplines in a cross-pollinating environment where inspiration is drawn from the worlds of music, dance, theatre, art history, literature, poetry, sculpture, and crafts.

The vision statement of the project is: To create an inspired environment within a centre for art education and appreciation that attracts and uses the best achievements of artists from many art forms and from many countries in order to immerse artists, teachers and students in an intense uplifting atmosphere of pioneering thought and creativity - a process that allows learning to happen through pleasure, epiphany and elation in perceptions of beauty.

Randy explains how teachers from other disciplines can help visual artists to approach their work from a completely different dimension. For example a singer might show how counterpoint in music can inform the same approach in a painting or a choreographer might reveal how physical pattern in movement offers new perspectives on visual patterns.

Creative writing and dialogue can be used to address the emotional and mental context of creative expression. The concept of beauty will be explored in depth. How is it personally experienced? Is it different for for every individual? How is it that we respond with awe to a particular visual stimulus, object, sound or movement? Is there an inherently spiritual content in art? Why do we need it? Is it some form of magic?

In addition to achieving an intellectual understanding of artistic processes efforts will be made to reclaim the visceral response to art that has been been marginalised in favour of conceptual approaches. Appreciation of the essential quality in a work of art will be encouraged above considerations of genre such as avant garde or traditional.

Students, whether beginners or experienced, will be allowed to develop at their own pace and progress will not be measured by the domination of technical skill/talent/craft. These elements will be taught appropriately with respect and encouragement, but within the context of the wider agenda of the Moray Art Centre.

In contrast with most art schools the concept of the Art Centre is to provide a curriculum uniquely structured to help students achieve their best potential through organic growth in their experience of creativity. It could be described as a holistic approach in the same way as holistic medicine can function as complementary to traditional medical practice.

The proposal envisions studios for teaching, space for exhibitions, studios for individuals and meeting and storage rooms configured to encourage a sense of community. Students and teachers will be welcome to use the facilities at any time of the day or night, seven days per week.

Randy Klinger who is a graduate with honours from the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Art and Science in New York City, is the Project Co-ordinator of the project which is a registered Scottish charity and a Not For Profit company limited by guarantee.

Thus far £475,000 has been donated by individuals and awarded as grants to the establishment and construction of the Moray Art Centre, (with just £100,000 left to go), Our founding Board of Directors with an Advisory Group include the Group Director of the Lloyds TSB Bank, North of Scotland Group, the Head of Art at Moray College, a founder of the Open College of The Arts in Scotland, the Head of Collections Management of The Tate Gallery, the Artist/Filmmaker, John Byrne, a variety of business people prominent in communications, public relations and marketing, and several art instructors and independent artists from many disciplines the UK, Italy, Germany and the USA.

An analogy of the objectives of the Moray Art Centre Project can be drawn from a lecture by Jeanette Winterson, journalist and author who asks What Is Art For? "Artists work at the interface between the real and the imagined. They coax us out of the numbness of the everyday - where life passes in a blur - and into a heightened space where we can inhabit other lives and experiences. The mind opens and stretches , takes in more than it knows, and returns to the ordinary world. This is not just relief - it is revolution. If art has not that purpose then it is not art."

Mr Klinger aims to invite and instigate a nation-wide dialogue, a debate, an amplification of ideas and feelings about what beauty is and how we experience it.

The international Actress and Theatre Director, Piccolo Teatro di Milano, Laura Pasetti, a close supporter of the project writes about Beauty, in regards to the Moray art Centre’s mission:
“For me, the first gift that Art brings into life is the ability to transform pain.

“We often think that pain is a condition that helps us to evolve. It is not necessary true. Pain can be the veil that makes the sound of truth much softer and create obstacles to the birth of a new emotion inside.

“The second gift that Art brings is the ability to listen. We love talking, we love being in silence as well; but to listen means something totally different. It means to be able to overcome our limited vision of life, to open up to the sacred mystery of the Unknown.

“The third gift is the knowledge. We are ignorant. We think that history and philosophy are a baggage of the past. They are actually a way to meditate on life. On our story, learning through the thoughts and experiences of others what the human nature is made of. A Russian theatre Master, Anatolij Vassiliev says that an actor can be considered as such when he has finished studying all Plato by heart and some religious texts. An artist has an incredible responsibility, he is an alchemist and he deals with the energy of Transformation. He can’t deny the importance of knowledge and wisdom.

“This idea comes from the realisation that as human beings we have the duty to
give to the next generations the instruments to build their thoughts, to express their soul, to give birth to their beauty within. And this is what in my opinion an artist is called for:
To progress on the path to Infinity, to give eternal state to what is moving
inside the heart (feelings, emotions, poetry...).

“When Michelangelo completed “Moses”, he shouted at his sculpture crying “Why don’t you speak!” He was cheated by his own creation. The masterpiece was much bigger then his creator. Michelangelo evolved in that moment. Humankind evolved with him.”

Tom Cook is a Director of Alternatives, St James’s Church, Piccadilly, London, facilitator of the Drawing From Your Heart workshops and an Honorary Trustee.

© Tom Cook, 2006