Awe and Wonder

Perspectives from The Artist's Road

Night Fishing Full Moon Oil © John Hulsey

There has been some very interesting research conducted in recent years on the subject of awe—the feeling one can get when confronted with something unexpectedly beautiful or interesting. Scientists wanted to know if that “stop-in-your-tracks” feeling created any other effects in our bodies and where those effects were located. From our conversations with artists working all over the country, we understand that awe and its partner, wonder, are primary components of why many of us create in the first place. Something important and unusual has moved us profoundly.

The first step for the researchers was to define what awe consists of. Dr. Dacher Keltner, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, has spent twenty years studying awe. He says that awe is distinct from joy or fear and that experiencing it can positively affect our bodies, our relationships and how we view the world around us. He …