Studio view showing some tools of the trade

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

Rembrandt and Shakespeare, Tolstoy and Gauguin, possessed, I believe, powerful hearts, not powerful wills. They loved the range of material they used, the work’s possibilities excited them; the field’s complexities fired their imaginations. The caring suggested the tasks; the tasks suggested the schedules. They learned their fields and then loved them. They worked, respectfully, out of their love and knowledge, and they produced complex bodies of work that endure. Then, and only then, the world maybe flapped at them
some sort of hat, which, if they were still living, they ignored as well as they could, to keep at their tasks.

Annie Dillard in The Abundance, quoted in The Marginalian by Maria Popova, November 23, 2022

Comments are welcome!