Barbara at work, Photo: Marianne Barcellona

* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.

Technique is the test of sincerity.  If a thing isn’t worth getting the technique to say, it is of inferior value.  All that must be regarded as exercise.  Richter in his Treatise on Harmony, you see, says, “These are the principles of harmony and counterpoint; they have nothing whatever to do with composition, which is quite a separate activity.”  

Ezra Pound in Writers at Work:  The Paris Review Interviews Second Series, edited by George Plimpton

Comments are welcome!