Whole Dude – Whole Artist

The term artist is used to describe a person who works in, or is skilled in the technique of any of the fine arts, especially in painting, drawing, and sculpture. The term artistry describes the artistic ability which includes the use of imagination, a feeling for form, and a feeling for effect.

I am using the term Whole Artist to discover the person who may have used imagination to create forms to produce desired effects while the form itself lacks the cognitive abilities to generate its own form.

Plants may produce flowers of different colors while they essentially lack cognitive abilities to recognize the visual effect of the color they produce. For example, we can examine the colorful hues of Chilean flowers, Mimulus luteus, Mimulus cupreus (Red Emperor), and Mimulus variegatus.

Arielle Cooley, a researcher at the University of Michigan studied these Chilean Mimulus flowers of different colors and found that the plants make the same type of anthocyanin pigment called cyandin.  The study includes Thin Layer Chromatography Analysis of petal extracts. Each flower produces red-hued anthocyanins and the yellow carotenoids. The two pigment types in combination create the fire-hydrant red spots on the yellow flowers of Mimulus luteus. Cooley concluded the observations with the remark: “Like an artist mixing simple colors of paints on a palette to achieve a specific shade, the Chilean flowers achieve their visual effect using varying proportions of red and yellow pigments.”

Who is the Artist?

No single function can explain the coloration of living things. We need a comprehensive theory that predicts the lines and patterns of coloration of plants and animals. An artist’s palette containing only three properly chosen colors is entirely adequate under most circumstances to produce the various visual effects of color that is observed. The optical mechanisms involved in the production of color are complex. Coloration is a dynamic and complex characteristic and the term must be clearly distinguished from the term ‘color’ which only refers to the spectral qualities of emitted or reflected light.

It is apparent that plants, and animals have no cognitive abilities to produce the coloration by which they are recognized. The coloration displayed gives us a clue about the nature of the Whole Artist who uses imagination, has feelings for the forms created and seeks satisfaction from the visual effects that he produced.

Man must use the ability of visual perception, to visualize the Whole Artist who is at work.