To study art is to look beyond what’s in the frame and understand the framework of the artist.
Art comes in many forms—paintings, sculptures, architecture, installations. For Katie Kresser, resident art historian at Seattle Pacific University, an understanding of art is defined by more than its form. In her Faith and Imagination lecture on March 19, 2026, Kresser argued that recognizing art’s true meaning requires looking beyond the work of the paintbrush and into the mind of the artist who holds it.
Beauty and Butterflies
It’s easy for discussions about artistic frameworks to become bogged down in academic study, so Kresser suggests a simpler approach she compares to chasing butterflies. When a young girl runs after the fluttering, colorful creature, she is not concerned with labeling its exact species or capturing it for scientific study. “Instead,” Kresser said, “she is just overwhelmed with admiration and wonder toward the butterflies. She wants to interact with them and receive them for the beautiful creature they are.” When observing art, we can each tap into this feeling of curiosity, delight, and awe.
Whether we’re studying an ancient sculpture or a modern installation, this exploration can help us appreciate not only the form but also the artist behind it. And while the artist’s final product is the most visible commodity, their unseen efforts behind each work are just as important to understanding a piece’s full scope. To help viewers find insight into the mind of the artist, Kresser presented three different models to describe an artist’s progression from inspiration to creation: the divine textbook, trial and error, and awe and wonder.
Genius and Ingenuity
Kresser introduced the divine textbook model, citing artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarroti who viewed themselves as “great artistic geniuses who alone were able to see perfect beauty and perfect truth.” The belief that their art came from divine inspiration was often widely accepted in their time and continues in our day. “We think of them as having that process where they’re able to get access to this codified divine beauty up in some divine textbook somewhere, and they, alone, through their genius, are able to manifest it for us,” Kresser said. In this model, the butterfly would be considered a heavenly symbol, and only a few artists are thought capable of comprehending its divine meaning. The rest of humanity simply learns of the butterfly’s divine truth through the artist’s depiction of it.
In contrast to this idea is the trial and error model. Kresser represented this philosophy with an image of someone figuring out how to spark fire for the first time; they don’t believe their work has inherent meaning or divinity, but they are using the materials and ideas available to them to create something practical and new.
Artists who abide by the trial and error theory discover and determine their own meaning through their work, rather than waiting on divine inspiration. In this way, artists act more as innovators and produce work through adapting to and experimenting with the world around them. An artist applying the trial and error approach is much like a child who approaches a butterfly with practical curiosity, which, through experimentation, can be understood by any observer.
The purest way to view inspiration, Kresser said, is the awe and wonder model. Artists with this outlook borrow a belief in divine meaning from the textbook model, but rather than wait for a pinpointed moment of revelation, they believe in a gradual process of understanding truth. They value the disciplined process of trial and error but still see their work as more than just a practical exploration of how the world functions.
An artist with the awe and wonder outlook views the world with the unbiased curiosity of a child, simultaneously admiring and seeking to understand their environment. With the awe and wonder model, artists appreciate both the beauty and the scientific behavior of a butterfly, looking for both divine and objective truth.
Where Passion Meets Perspective
These models allow us to understand the meaning an artist is trying to convey through their work. And, whether or not we consider ourselves an artist, Kresser said we, too, can benefit from approaching art with a sense of awe and wonder. “I think we all come into the world with a disposition toward awe and wonder, and I think that’s the foundation upon which other ways of knowing are built.” This view, Kresser said, is essential to understanding art, artists, and ourselves.
Learn more about the Humanities Center’s Faith and Imagination lectures here.