Category Archives: Inspiration
Pearls from artists* # 576
In progress: “Shadow,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 26” x 20”
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
A word derived from Latin, persona, originally referred to the masks worn by actors in ancient classical theatre. In Jungian psychology, this term refers to the inner character that we use to face the world. Drawn from societal expectations, cultural norms, and natural attributes, it is the person we want others to think we really are. Our persona is our brave face, our false front. It is the ongoing project of building our ideal self.
… the persona is our somewhat embellished view of ourselves, the shiny face that we want the world to see. It’s opposite, everything we reject about ourselves, is called the shadow.
… our shadow is the pain we’ve forgotten about. It is a complex within us, a split-off part our consciousness loaded with emotional weight. Our persona is what we want to be seen to be; shadow is what we least want to be.
Gary Bobroff in Carl Jung: Knowledge in a Nutshell
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Pearls from artists* # 575
Barbara’s Studio
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Creativity is a harmony of opposite tensions… As we ride through the flux of our own creative processes, we hold onto both poles. If we let go of play, our work becomes ponderous and stiff. If we let go of the sacred, our work loses its connection to the ground on which we live.
Knowledge of the creative process cannot substitute for creativity, but it can save us from giving up on creativity when the challenges seem too intimidating and free play seems blocked. If we know that our inevitable setbacks and frustrations are phases of the natural cycle of creative processes, if we know that our obstacles can become our ornaments, we can persevere and bring our desires to fruition. Such perseverance can be a real test, but there are ways through, there are guideposts. And the struggle, which is guaranteed to take a lifetime, is worth it. It is a struggle that generates incredible pleasure and joy. Every attempt we make is imperfect; yet each one of these imperfect attempts is an occasion for a delight unlike anything else on earth.
The creative path is a spiritual path. The adventure is about us, about the deep self, the composer in all of us, about originality, meaning not that which is all new, but that which is fully and originally ourselves.
Stephen Nachmanovitch in Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art
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Pearls from artists* # 574
Barbara’s Studio
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
A creative life is risky business. To follow your own course, not patterned on parents, peers, or institutions, involves a delicate balance of tradition and personal freedom, a delicate balance of sticking to your guns and remaining open to change. While on some dimensions living a normal life, you are nevertheless a pioneer, breaking away from the molds and models that inhibit the heart’s desire, creating life as it goes. Being, acting, creating in the moment without props and supports, without security, can be supreme play, and it can also be frightening, the very opposite of play. Stepping into the unknown can lead to delight, poetry, invention, humor, lifetime friendships, self-realization, and occasionally a great creative breakthrough. Stepping into the unknown can also lead to failure, disappointment, rejection, sickness, or death.
Stephen Nachmanovitch in Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art
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Pearls from artists* # 573
In the studio
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
The literature on creativity is full of tales of breakthrough experiences. These moments come when you let go of some impediment or fear, and boom – in whooshes the muse. You feel clarity, power, freedom, as something unforeseen jumps out at you. The literature of Zen… abounds with accounts of kensho and satori – moments of illumination and moments of total change of heart. There come points in your life when you simply kick the door open. But there is no ultimate breakthrough; what we find in the development of a creative life is an open-ended series of provisional breakthroughs. In this journey there is no endpoint because it is the journey into the soul.
Stephen Nachmanovitch in Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art
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Pearls from artists* # 572
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
The use of color to paint the Chinchorro mummies is interesting. According to anthropologist Victor Turner (1970), colors are experiences of social relationships. The use of particular colors in prehistory, then, has meaning even if today we cannot comprehend these meanings. Turner said that white, red, and black are the earliest colors produced by humans and they “provide a kind of primordial classification of reality” (Turner, 1970:90). This color trilogy is associated with reproduction, life, and death. Obviously, in the case of Chinchorros, black and red colors predominated. Black is equated with darkness, like the night, invisible yet present. Black is what is hidden, it is a mystical transition (Turner, 1970:109, 89-73). Black represents death, but not the end of a cycle, not an annihilating, rather a change of status and existence (Turner, 1970:71-72). Red on the other hand is equal to membership, change, blood, and social place (Turner, 1970:90). Red can be associated with life, here and in the afterworld.
The use of colors as symbols is rather universal, but the meaning of each color varies from culture to culture. In western societies black may be worn to symbolize mourning, but on other occasions it signifies relevance. The Yahgan Indians in South America used body painting with intricate patterns of black, white, and red to show their sadness and grief when someone died (Gusinde, 1937). Black was the color to symbolize mourning among the Incas (Montez, 1929:222; Zuidema, 1992:23).
Bernardo T. Arrizabalaga in Beyond Death: The Chinchorro Mummies of Ancient Chile
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Pearls from artists* #571
The Studio
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
To put it simply, but accurately, artists are often lost to the world because of their obsessions with their art. They may be just as lost as they prepare to work or incubate a new idea as in those feverish days when they make their final cuts on a film or race toward a publishing deadline. They may obsess about artistic questions and feel bursts of creative energy day or night, alone or in the company of others, in the middle of the work week or on vacation in the Bahamas.
Lost in time and space, the artist may feel more connected to Picasso, Emily Dickinson, Ingmar Bergman, Gertrude Stein, Handel, or Tennessee Williams than to the people in his immediate world. The living past holds extraordinary meaning for him. He travels elsewhere, removing his spirit and attention from the present. He may reside, as he works on his novel, in the childhood of a character, walking the garden paths and living the household dramas there. He may come upon a Rembrandt drawing and find himself wrenched, not to any particular place or time, but just elsewhere, as he experiences the greatness of his traditions, measures himself anew, and dreams again of his future.
Eric Maisel in A Life in the Arts: Practical Guidance and Inspiration for Creative and Performing Artists
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Pearls from artists* # 570
Barbara’s Studio
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
One of the main differences between the young girl who drew a line in chalk from the Metropolitan Museum all the way to her home on Park Avenue and the young woman who drew lines on canvas and paper twenty years later was that the latter understood the willfulness that drove the child. She was facing “the monster,” the consuming need to create, which was beyond her control but no longer beyond her comprehension. Helen [Frankenthaler] had long understood that her gift set her apart, and that it would be nearly impossible to describe how and why without sounding arrogant or cruel. “It’s saying I’m different, I’m special, consider me differently,” she explained years later. “And it’s also on the other side, a recognition that one is lonely, that one is not run of the mill, that the values are different, and yet we all go into the same supermarkets… and we are all moved one way or another by children and seasons, and dreams. So that art separates you…”
The separation she described was not merely the result of what one did, whether it be painting or sculpting or writing poetry. Helen said the distance between an artist and society was due to a quality both intangible and intrinsic, a “spiritual” or “magical” aspect that nonartists did not always understand and were sometimes frightened by. “They want you to behave a certain way. They want you to explain what you do and why you do it. Or they want you removed, either put on a pedestal or victimized. They can’t handle it.” Helen concluded that existing outside so-called normal life was simply the price an artist paid to create.
Mary Gabriel in Ninth Street Women
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Travel photo of the month*
Claude Monet’s house and gardens in Giverny, France
*favorite travel photos that have not yet appeared in this blog
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Pearls from artists* # 569
With Jennifer and Dmitri after our film shoot in Alexandria, VA
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Artists consider themselves to be independent people. But the artist’s independent, rebellious, nonconforming nature, coupled with his introspective habits of mind, also make him wary of social interactions. Whereas the fireman, for example, has no reason to believe keeping company with other firemen will diminish his ability to fight fires, the artist, keenly aware that his journey is a personal and independent one, often fears that contact with his peers will slow him down, detour him, limit him, or unduly influence him.
Eric Maisel in A Life in the Arts: Practical Guidance and Inspiration for Creative and Performing Artists
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Pearls from artists* # 568
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Some people say they work best under pressure, but working under pressure is a bit of a fallacy. It’s not waiting till the last minute that gives you the good work; it’s the focus that’s required when you wait till the last minute that brings about the good work. So think of it this way: your focus is the center of your brilliance; why not avail yourself of that brilliance on a regular basis? Everyone has her own rhythm, but if you don’t like the fact that you procrastinate, one way to get out of it is to think what the alternative is. The alternative is, instead of trying to do a month’s work in a few intense days in the studio, to give yourself the pleasure of yourself in flow, in focus, on a regular basis.
Anna Deavere Smith in Letters to a Young Artist: Straight-Up Advice on Making a Life in the Arts for Actors, Performers, Writers, and Artists of Every Kind
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