“Art Talks”: with Peter Acheson

With everything that competes for our attention these days, one might well ask “Do we need art?” In a series of five talks, Peter Acheson, a painter who has made his home and studio in Ghent since 1998, will attempt to answer this question. Spoiler alert, the answer is an emphatic YES!
Many of the problems we face each day can be met creatively from the point of view of a reenergized sense of aesthetics. How does one serve beauty in a degraded world? What is the relationship between what we experience and how we experience it? Artists live and work exactly at this nexus- between the ‘what’ and the ‘how’, and these evening talks will propose art and the altered points of views it offers as a survival technique.
The talks will examine art since 1950 and not simply as a succession of styles.
Our talks and discussions will focus on understanding some of the myths behind the styles, and, as Jung advised us all to do, to “dream the myth forward”. Together, we will try to determine if art and poetry will succeed.