NEGATIVE CAPABILITY
We find our theme and title in a letter by the Romantic poet, John Keats, who in 1817 wrote to his brother about the capacity for artists to be in a state of doubt and mystery without anxiously seeking an explanation, about a cultural and artistic capacity, to live “in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason". It is the ability to embrace ambiguity and to resist the urge for quick, rational explanations which allows deeper creative insight and openness to what will, inevitably, emerge. In short, a receptiveness to, even a welcoming of, what we do not know.
Homewood Artist George Roberts, 2025