Many equate art with beauty, many with truth.
For some, it is the vision of fantastical realms, and for others it is a precise representation of reality.
Dreams versus details. Details versus dreams.
Less discussed are the healing properties of art—for artist and witness alike.
Consider this colorful creature. He has taken a pummeling, faced, then embraced it, and stitched himself into something beautiful. He is transformed.
A reader can be moved and changed by what he has read, for example, but it is the writer who is transformed in the act of writing, because part of what creating art does is empower us to make the unbearable bearable.
Art can effect change, but the act of creating art is change.