What is Art - To me to you? That is the question.

The word "art" for three letters it packs a punch!  So subjective, it is. (My Yoda statement of the day.)  Mmmmm?  Seriously, its not a new question or discussion by any stretch.  I thought about posting the dictionary definition, but no, just a guts out try at expressing what art means to me.   (If this post sounds self indulgent, sorry not meant to be so).
Lets first define some mediums of expression.  Storytelling-verbal or written, a painter, a race car driver, a teacher, a gardener, a singer, a songwriter, etc...
Can you see how a person can be those things and in the active form of doing those things are expressing a passion, a drive, a desire to share something from within themselves to others.
After going to an art show (my first experience with competitive art), I contemplated some of my observations. I noticed firstly that it was very easy to put myself in the "judge" role.  I thought at the moment I was "judging", it was okay. Because my art was as good...blah, blah, blah. However I was lining up my very grasshopper-ish pea sized talent against those who had the courage, and drive to share their art.  I have really repented of this attitude and ask forgiveness from the universe, (since I can't do it in person), for the sin of pride and puffiness.
Since then I look back and reflect on simpler things in my heart and why I continue this grasshopper course of learning to do art.
As I mentioned in my two previous posts, I want to share the feelings that art evokes in me.  Sometimes its as simple as a single color that makes me go wow.  It might be the wonder I get when I look at paintings that are hundreds of years older or more and they are just as alive as the day they were created.
Can I ever aspire to do that?  I don't know, and I don't think it matters.
My closest connection to this reality was a painting I did as I first started doing art.  A co worker  had lost a  close family member and it struck my heart, she was a kind person who did not let her emotions show during the most painful moments of her life.  I came home on a Friday night and cried as I painted her eyes, crying for her loss.  I still have this painting and as I look at it, its so crude and raw, the very definition of "6th grade" art.  My husband framed it before I could make any improvements on it, stating "its perfect just like that."  I always want to remember  my heart when I do art. Most of the time my work is not that visceral. For me the motion of my emotion from my heart, to my head, to the canvas,that was the journey on that Friday night.  I equate that night with being on a mountain peak, just briefly getting to see the world open before me, and now wanting to get back to that peak, just to see the view again.
Now when I meet more artists in the world of the internet, I'm amazed at the willingness to share this expression, even the artists that are working on a professional level share freely a certain amount of information and all those I have met express the love of the creative process.
Its almost an oxymoron that art is so individual and yet so universal in its purest sense.  Let me leave you with a poem I wrote over a year ago about this very deep subject of being an artist.

The Artists Prayer

She sits in her room as the music plays

weaving thoughts and color onto the paper.

Sometimes its "wow" and at other times, "not"

What drives her heart?

What drives her hand?

Why would she even want to understand?

To be driven by a force so unique,

a gift, a talent, what does she believe?

Quietly she says an artists prayer,

"let others see the heart of my work"

"let it speak to them the way it speaks to me"