Category Archives: Inspiration
Pearls from artists* # 679
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
PC: In your painting, you’ve always kept this speed of movement. One senses that you work something out slowly, deep down, that it’s hard work, but there’s always something fresh about its expression
HM: That’s because I revise my notion several times over. People often add or superimpose completing things without changing their plan, whereas I rework my plan every time. I always start again, working from the previous state. I try to work in a contemplative state, which is very difficult: contemplation is inaction and I act in contemplation.
In all the studies I’ve made from my own ideas, there’s never been a faux pas because I’ve always unconsciously had a feeling for the goal; I’ve made my way toward it the way one heads north, following the compass. What I’ve done, I’ve done by instinct, always with my sights on a goal I still hope to reach today. I’ve completed my apprenticeship now. All I ask is four or five years to realize the goal.
PC: Delacroix said that too. Great artists never look back.
HM: Delacroix also said – ten years after he’d left the place – “I’m just beginning to see Morocco.” He needed the perspective. Rodin said to an artist, “You need to stand back a long way for sculpture.” To which the student replied, “Master, my studio is only ten meters wide.”
Chatting With Henri Matisse: The Lost 1941 Interview, Henri Matisse with Pierre Courthion, edited by Serge Guilbaut
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Pearls from artists* # 678
Along the Seine, Paris, France
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
When I was a bit weary, losing hope, I would go out and walk across Paris. Sometimes I would meet an art lover who would say a word to me, nothing binding for him, but all the same it would buck me up a bit. For example, he might say: “What are you up to? I’d love to see what you’ve done. I’ll come and see you on Thursday at eleven. I’d go home feeling like a new man; I’d tell my wife how enthusiastic I felt; but on Thursday at ten I’d get an express letter saying, “Dear friend, please excuse me, something has come up.” But that wouldn’t matter so much because I’d made a new start. The deal had fallen through, but it’d still helped because it had given me new momentum.
Chatting With Henri Matisse: The Lost 1941 Interview, Henri Matisse with Pierre Courthion, edited by Serge Guilbaut
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Q: What would you be if you were not an artist?
The studio with pastel paintings in progress!
A: I honestly have no idea, but whatever it might be, there is a good chance that I’d be bored! In my younger days boredom was a strong motivator. I left the active duty Navy out of boredom. I couldn’t bear not being intellectually challenged (most of my jobs consisted of paper-pushing), not using my flying skills (at 27 I was a licensed commercial pilot and Boeing 727 flight engineer), and not developing my artistic talent. In what surely must be a first, by spending a lot of time and money training me for jobs I hated, the Navy turned me into a hard-working artist! And once I left the Navy there was no plan B. There was no time to waste. It was “full speed ahead.”
Art is a calling. You do not need to be told this if you are among those who are called. It’s all about “the work,” that all-consuming focus of an artist’s life. If a particular activity doesn’t make you a better artist, you avoid it. You work hard to nourish and protect your gifts. As artists we invent our own tasks, learn whatever we need in order to progress, and complete projects in our own time. It is life lived at its freest.
My art-making has led me to fascinating places: Mexico, Guatemala, Brazil, Chile, Easter island, Argentina, Uruguay, France, England, Italy, Bali, Java, India, Bhutan, and more; and to in-depth studies of intriguing subjects: drawing, color, composition, art and art history, the art business, film and film history, photography, mythology, literature, music, jazz history, and archaeology, particularly that of ancient Mesoamerica (the Olmec, Zapotec, Mixtec, Aztec, Maya, etc.). And this rich mixture continually grows! For anyone wanting to spend their time on earth learning and meeting new challenges, there is no better life than that of an artist.
I SO agree with this exchange that I read years ago between between Trisha Brown and Mikhail Baryshnikov in the New York Times. I wrote it on a piece of paper and taped it to my studio wall:
Trisha: How do you think we keep going? Are we obsessed?
Mikhail: We do it because there’s nothing better. I’m serious. Because there is nothing more exciting than that. Life is so boring, that’s why we are driven to the mystery of creation.
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Pearls from artists* # 677
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.
… in Japan, in the native Shinto religion of the land, where the rites are extremely stately, musical, and imposing, no attempt has been made to reduce their “affect images” to words. They have been left to speak for themselves – as rites, as works of art – through the eyes to the listening heart. And that, I would say, is what we, in our own religious rites, had best be doing, too. Ask an artist what his picture “means,” and you will not soon ask such a question again. Significant images render insights beyond speech, beyond the kinds of meaning speech defines. And if they do not speak to you, that is because you are not ready for them, and words will only serve to make you think you have understood, thus cutting you off altogether. You don’t ask what a dance means, you enjoy it. You don’t ask what the world means, you enjoy it. You don’t ask what you mean, you enjoy yourself; or at least, so you do when you are up to snuff.
Joseph Campbell in Myths to Live By
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Pearls from artists* # 676
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.
Henry James once said, ‘The great thing […] the sense of having done the best […] the sense which is the real life of the artist and the absence of which is his death, is having drawn from his own instrument the finest music that nature had hidden in it, of having played it as it should be played. He either does that or he doesn’t […]. and if he doesn’t he isn’t worth speaking of.
Kate Kretz in Art From Your core: A Holistic Guide to Visual Voice
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Pearls from artists* # 675
Working
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Before, I’d never really had a taste for anything much. The things people wanted me to do left me cold. But the moment I had that paint box in my hands, I felt that this was my life. Like a cow given a sight of grass, I just headed straight into it, to the understandable despair of my father, who’d put me through other subjects. I was entranced; this was it. Here was a sort of Paradise regained, where I was completely free, alone and at peace – whereas in other things that I’d been made to do, I’d always been a bit bored and ill at ease.
For me, it was the same experience, but with soft pastel. – BR
Chatting with Henri Matisse: The Lost 1941 Interview edited by Serge Guilbaut
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Pearls from artists* # 674
Southampton, New York Photo: Susan Erlichman
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Everything about art requires dedication and presence. It is an intimate act, demanding the kind of sustained devotion we rarely lavish on other human beings. The artist’s generosity is highly impractical because there is no guarantee that it will ever be appreciated. Consider the level of optimism needed to repeatedly spend, even deplete, whatever reserves might be required to create the most superlative gift you could offer, one that is essentially given away to the world for free. The work we make is a love letter in a bottle, thrown into the ocean. It may or may not be read. We do not negotiate. like businesspeople, ‘You give me this, and I will give you that…’ We bequeath our pursuit of excellence and creative spirit to our audience, without reservation or qualification. We know what we have invested in it and sleep better because of it.
– Kate Kretz in Art From Your Core: A Holistic Guide to Visual Voice
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Pearls from artists* # 672
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Let me now, therefore, turn directly to the question of the European individual and, for a start, cite the observations of the Swiss psychologist, Carl G. Jung, throughout whose works the term “individuation” is used to indicate the psychological process of achieving individual wholeness. Jung makes the point that in the living of our lives every one is us is required by his society to play some specific social role. In order to function in the world we are all continually enacting parts Jung calls personnae, from the Latin persona, meaning “mask, false face,” the mask worn by an actor on the Roman stage, through which he “sounded” (per-sonare, “to sound through). One has to appear in some mask or other if one is to function socially at all; and even those who choose to reject such masks can only put on others, representing rejection, “Hell no!” or something of this sort. Many of the masks are playful, opportunistic, superficial; others, however, go deep, very deep, much deeper than we know. Just as every body consists of a head, two arms, a trunk, two legs, etc., so does every living person consist, among other features, of a personality, a deeply imprinted persona through which he is made known no less to himself than to others, and without which he would not be. It is silly, therefore, to say, for example, “Let’s take off our masks and be natural!” And yet – there are masks and masks. There are the masks of youth, the masks of age, the masks of the various social roles, and the masks also that we project upon others spontaneously, which obscure them, and to which we then react.
Joseph Campbell in Myths to Live By
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Pearls from artists* # 672
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.
Beware of first impressions; try to have more presence of mind.
You should not be deceived by the eager promises of your best friends, by offers of help from influential people, or by the interest which men of talent seem to take in you, into thinking that there is anything real in what they say – real in the way of results, I mean. Many people are full of good intentions when they speak, but their eagerness subsides appreciably when it comes to action, like blusterers, or people who make angry scenes […]. And you, yourself, try to be more cautious in the way you welcome people, and above all, avoid these ridiculous attentions; they’re only offered on the impulse of the moment.
Cultivate a well-ordered mind, it’s your only road to happiness; and to reach it, be orderly in everything, even in the smallest details.
The Journal of Eugène Delacroix, edited by Hubert Wellington
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Pearls from artists* # 673
Oct 22
Posted by barbararachkoscoloreddust
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.
You may occasionally have the opportunity to publicly comment about the work, which helps to shape its life, but others will also interpret, criticize, and project their own agendas onto it. You must learn to be ok with that. You cannot follow your art around, explaining it and defending it. Once released, the life of your work depends on all sorts of factors completely out of your control. Separating your ego and self-worth from what you produce can be challenging, but it is essential. It protects your vital studio activity from the damaging effects of the outside world. Letting go of the old work also frees you up to move forward and focus on the next great idea.
Kate Kretz in Art From Your Core: A Holistic Guide to Visual Voice
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Posted in 2025, 2025, An Artist's Life, Inspiration, Pearls from Artists, Quotes, Studio
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