Category Archives: Inspiration
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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Pearls from artists* # 567
With “Impresario,” 70” x 50” framed, soft pastel on sandpaper
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Almost every artist seems to meet someone at the beginning of his career who profoundly and often inexplicably affects later decisions and attitudes, someone whose personal expression is identified with the peculiar glamour of art that hits certain people so hard that they are caught up with it for the rest of their lives.
Mary Gabriel in Ninth Street Women
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Pearls from artists* # 566
With “Sacrificial” (left), 70” x 50” framed and “Disruptor,” 35” x 28.5” framed; both are soft pastel on sandpaper
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Money, fame. It was funny, it was confusing. It was the end. The purity was gone. “I vividly experienced the change of climate with the financial boom in the art world,” Mercedes [Matter] said. “The change from taking poverty and obscurity for granted to competing for a place in the spotlight. At the Cedar [Tavern] one began hearing many talking about galleries over their bourbons instead… [of] about art as before over their beers.” Artists had become entertainers, selling themselves and their gifts for a piece of paper, the almighty dollar, emblazoned with a new motto, “In God We Trust.” Paul Brach said 1957 was the last year that artists made other artists’ reputations. From then on, they were made by a machine called “the art establishment.” “Career, the nemesis of our past, had crept up on all of us,” Larry [Rivers] said. It was like a virus, something all of them had but none of them wanted. At least in the abstract.
Mary Gabriel in Ninth Street Women
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Pearls from artists* # 565
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Jung and Freud both observed that much of what ails us today is a product of being cut off from our inner life. Healing that division requires us to speak the language of symbol, and that necessitates a kind of thinking which is not easy for many of us. This kind of approach is particularly challenging in our culture, which has a bias in favor of the too bright, daylight awareness of the conscious mind, and privileges literal thinking and mechanistic ways of understanding the world.
Gary Bobroff in Carl Jung: Knowledge in a Nutshell
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Pearls from artists* 564
Indus River, Ladakh, India
*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 travel through the peaks and valleys of Himalayan Buddhism is to become a collector of fragmented images and a teasing array of sense impressions, many of them bound to counter the stereotypes of simplicity and serenity that we expect to define a Buddhist universe. At the end of the journey, the traveler assembles these sense fragments into an individualistic understanding of what has been seen and experienced. Maybe that’s the way it should be, since Buddhism itself teaches us that each person must seek his own way to knowledge and enlightenment in this life or some other.
Barbara Crossette in So Close to Heaven: The Vanishing Buddhist Kingdoms of the Himalayas
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Pearls from artists* # 563
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
[John] Graham defined art as a “process of abstracting” thought and emotion by the use of paint or metal or stone. Because art was therefore intrinsically abstract, the duty of the artist would be to push abstraction “fearlessly to its logical end instead of evading it under the disguises of charm or being ‘true to nature.’” The artist created for society, he said, but if that society didn’t like what he or she had produced, the artist”does not trade his ideals for success. Martyrs and saints love luxury and success just as much as ordinary people, only they love something else even more.” Graham said, if the artist is a true genius, he can expect to be misunderstood and alone. “The beauty of genius is frightful to behold, few can envisage it. Others find subterfuge in scepticism.” The abstract artist, he said, would be repeatedly challenged by such skeptics asking, “‘What does it mean?’… Is it a sky, a house, a horse?’” To which they should respond with confidence and honesty, “‘No, it is a painting.’”
Mary Gabriel in Ninth Street Women
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Q: Can you explain how your current work relates to Jungian archetypes?
In progress: “Wise One,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 58” x 38”
A: Here’s an example. The passage below is from Carl Jung: Knowledge in a Nutshell by Gary Bobroff.
The Wise Old Man or Woman is a figure found throughout folklore and mythology. They possess superior understanding and also often a more developed spiritual or moral character. Frequently, such characters provide the information or learning that the Hero needs to move forward in their quest. In Star Wars, Ben Kenobi plays the teacher to Luke, introducing purpose and knowledge into the young Hero’s life. Where the Hero brings drive, courage, and direct action, the Wise Old One introduces the importance of the opposing values of thought and questioning. Jung describes it thus: ‘Often the old man in fairytales asks questions like who? Why? Whence? Wither? For the purpose of inducing self-reflection and mobilizing the moral forces.’
The Wise One may appear in disguise to test the character of others. In the second Star Wars film, The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Luke’s mentor Yoda does not reveal himself as such when they first meet. He waits, asking questions that test Luke’s motivation for being there. Jung associated the Trickster archetype with the Wise One, and the use of disguise emphasizes this correlation.
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Pearls from artists* # 562
“Shadow,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 26” x 20,” in progress
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Jung observed that complexes could affect groups of people en masse. He saw that certain moments seemed to be expressions of a collective shadow, a bursting forth of a mass psychosis; the repressed side of a whole group coming alive; a tribal Mr. Hyde. He saw this madness first-hand in Germany in the 1930s and wrote about it. But every era carries some measure of collective shadow.
One could argue that no moment in time has seen more of the reality of human darkness than ours. Having witnessed the Holocaust and faced the threat of nuclear war in the twentieth century, and now facing the environmental impact of fossil fuels and plastics in the twenty-first century, we are undoubtedly aware of more of humanity’s potential for destruction than any of our ancestors ever were. Such a view does not come from a moralizing stance. Our era has made forced witnesses of us all.
The shadow is about where we put the Devil – where do we allow darkness to be housed? Racism and bigotry offer the relief of foisting our group’s shadow onto another whom we view as lesser. Doing so enables us not to look at or feel our shadow, and not see our own worst selves. But this collective shadow of our modern culture is also bigger and wider than group-to-group projections. There are culture-wide or civilization expressions of the collective shadow.
Jung saw the widespread loss of connection to the inner life and to a lived spirituality as one of the primary illnesses of our time. He observed that people were no longer animated by the traditional religions… For Jung, this meant that we’ve lost the old way but not yet found the new, and are sitting in a spiritual vacuum.
Into that vacuum, without our awareness, has slipped our fascination with human technology. Observe people closely today and you’ll notice that we have an almost magical faith in our devices. People see their computers and phones as all-knowing and expect them to function perfectly all the time, and view pharmaceuticals as magic cure-alls. Where we used to put God, we now have put technology. Where spirit was, we have unconsciously placed human genius.
Gary Bobroff in Carl Jung: Knowledge in a Nutshell
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