STORIES FROM THE ARTS 71
quality of things but the normal pattern of nature and the most
desirable form of experience. Art is a way of living for the Navajo.
They experience beauty as an essential condition of life. Beauty is not
in things, but in the dynamic relationship among things. Navajo sand
paintings are an example of the idea of creating beauty, harmony
and health by the process of art making. The Navajo create beautiful
sand paintings within the context of ritual practice. These paintings
are then destroyed. The aesthetic value is found in the creation of the
sand painting, not in its preservation.
Aesthetic response and responsibility
Our innate aesthetic response to the beauty of the world is
fundamental to a nature-based expressive arts approach. Within the
field of expressive arts we place particular emphasis upon our human
capacity to respond to beauty. Beauty awakens us, inspires us and
takes our breath away. Beauty in expressive arts is about integrity
and includes all aspects of life, the dark and the light. Beauty offers
us soul nourishment (Knill et al. 2004), and this nourishment is
particularly needed in the times in which we are living.
Aesthetic response
In the field of expressive arts work, Paolo Knill et al. (2004) speaks
of aesthetic response as our human capacity to be touched and
moved by beauty. This is a response of bodily origin happening in
occurrence with the imagination. It is sensual, imaginal and often
surprising, whether pleasurable or painful. The aesthetic response
can be profound, soul stirring and breathtaking. Aesthetic responses,
says Knill, are deep responses that have the capacity to open doors
to the soul.
Archetypal psychologist James Hillman (1989, 1992, 1999) calls
for an aesthetic response to the world. Our capacity to respond to the
world is an ability of the heart, closely linked to our imagination. He
stresses both the importance of the imaginative response of the heart