I read this the for the second time and I can not believe how much I love it. http://faculty.smcm.edu/lnscheer/mce.html

In the chapter called Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, Thomas McEvilley goes through 13 ways of looking at where and how content arises in art. This reading was so relevant to my career as an artist and as an instructor that I thought it would be nice to share with you and my Art 100 students. I encourage you all to do the same. I get students that have the mindset that they are creating art for art's sake, and they say there is no meaning, or reason as to their choices in the work. I tell them be it as it may, the content is embedded within the piece whether they knowingly put it there or not. This is where they get a little confused but I think by sharing this reading with them it can clear things up. What do you think?

As an artist I find that my content comes from many places. If looking at McEvilley, I can say I have used: Content that arising from the aspect of the artwork that is understood as representational, content arising from verbal supplements supplied by the artist, Content arising from the material of which the artwork is made, content arising from the scale of the artwork (I like to include quantity in with scale), Content arising from the temporal duration of the artwork, Content arising from the context of the work, and really I think every I have hit all thirteen ways of deriving content. This is exactly my point: content is in there no matter if we plan it or not. This is why every stroke is deliberate and has a purpose because if it does not it just adds to the pile of unknown content the viewer will receive. I know we can not control every element but we can herd them in the general direction.