The skill of perception The newborn baby and the [blind man suddenly gifted with sight] do not have to learn to see. Sight is given to them. But they do have to learn to perceive. Perception is learnt and learnt slowly. Skill is required for perception as for speech. We are largely unaware of the skill we exercise. None of the things we have to learn to perceive are self-evident, or, apparently, instinctively evident. No doubt, however, we have an instinctive aptitude for this learning, and once we have learnt we cannot easily see as though we had not. As Ruskin says, one has to strive, if one is to see with the 'Innocent Eye'. David Pye, The Nature and Aesthetics of Design The innocence of the eyethe innocent i seeingperceptionlearninginstinct
I mix it with two in my thought It is the artist who, more than other men, is able to create something out of nothing. A whole artistic work is immeasurably more than the sum of its parts. “I mix it with two in my thought”; this is the statement of the fact of universal experience that the work of art has real existence apart from its translation into material form. Dorothy Sayers, The Mind of the Maker The design concept art