From an artist’s perspective, Art is seen as self-expression through an act of creation. By copying nature and presenting abstract concepts before our senses, he plays both the role of interpreter and messenger of the soul. He’s the scribe of the Gods and the voice of the people.
When he tries to express ideas, visions, dreams and phantasms, he makes manifest what is hidden; he brings objects down from the mental realm and reveal them to the senses through symbolism. On the other end, he can also reverse this process when it copies nature and presents it to our mind, revealing the spectacular in the mundane. In other words, the artist is a link between the manifested world of appearances and the hidden world of ideas; he reveals what lies beyond appearances and conceal ideas into symbols.
Art is thus the creation of the artist, the application of his imagination, the language the “heart”. "Art is not knowledge, but actually requires the absence of knowledge."(1) Even though it requires skills or crafts, it is not that either. Art is intelligence at work. It is the crystallisation of the artist’s imagination in space and time and it’s real value lies not in objective analysis but in it’s appeal to the emotions of the beholder.
“Art is symbolic of activities other than itself, it is a preparation for these activities. In the life of art the immature mind enjoys a simulacrum of the life of explicit reason, a life which it is not yet able to enjoy except through such a mirror (the imagination). It is not truth or morality or utility, but it prepares the mind for a direct acquaintance with these things; and therefore beauty is the mother of truth and goodness, and art is the corner-stone of all sound education.” (2)
(1), (2): Mind Volume 34, issue 134, Plato’s Philosophy of Art.