How big is an artist’s canvas? What does it hold before the artist works on it? What happens to it in the end?

We were discussing cameras in office. The specs and their impact on photography. It occurred to me that the photo shows just the perspective of the person who captured it. To the untrained eye, it is a simple photo. For another photographer, every technical detail like light, subject, object, texture, focus, area, positioning maybe even ‘relevance to the times’ will be points to watch for. But it’s just a photo. The photo is truly great if it can convey the thoughts and emotions of the photographer at the time of taking the picture, to every person who sees it. Real photography happens in the mind of the photographer, the camera is just a tool to capture that thought and emotion. Add to that our digital tools at the camera and outside it, photographers have immense power to “edit” the content and present a powerful photo.

This holds true for every artist. To a dancer, his body and surroundings are the tools for expression. To a singer, his voice; a comedian, the times; a writer, his pen and to a politician, the opportunity.

Barring instances where movies are banned for bold depiction of ideas or reality, I think a filmmaker holds the best spot in terms of freedom of expression, scope for experimentation, duration and hues of the message. The filmmaker’s canvas is 3 hours long.

And then it hits me… these people don’t write on paper, dance on a stage, act in front of a camera or draw on a cloth…. They work on our mind. Our mind is their canvas. On our mind they draw, act, speak, sing, chisel. Contrary to popular belief, the canvas is not empty to start with. Like the scene in “Anbe Sivam” where Kamal sees an artwork in spilled food, artists just use the contents of our socially conditioned mind and try to make us see the inherent order within an all prevailing chaos. They bend the matrix of time, society and culture making infinitesimal changes in an infinite audience leading up to being the prime-movers of change (not necessarily progress).

While I’ve presented people and professions as being male, I believe there is very little that men do which women can’t do and viceversa.