Category Archives: Inspiration
Q: What made you fall in love with soft pastel versus another medium?
“The Champ” in “Worlds Seen & Unseen” at Westbeth Gallery, NYC
A: I like to get my hands right into my work. In other words, I don’t like brushes or anything else to intervene between my hands and what I’m working on.
I work with 400 or 500 grit Uart sandpaper so the downside is that I rub my fingertips raw from blending layers of soft pastel onto sandpaper. I’ve tried using rubber gloves (they make my fingers sweat and wear out fast), cotton gloves (they leave bits of lint on the paper), using a blending stump (it leaves lint on the paper), etc., but nothing works as well as my own fingers. So sore fingertips are an unavoidable occupational hazard. I sometimes take days off from the studio just so that my hands can heal.
I adore color and love looking at the thousands of pastels in my studio! After working with this medium for more than thirty years, I still love what I am able to accomplish and I am still pushing it to do new things. The colors are rich, intense, velvety. No other medium is as sensuous or as satisfying.
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 347
“Prophecy,” on view in “Worlds Seen & Unseen” at Westbeth Gallery, NYC
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Like the cyclotrons of physicists, the artistic work is a machine for uncovering hidden layers of reality. It gives us insight into the psychic forces that shape the world, enabling us to divine where we come from and where we are heading. It is in this sense that art can be said to be prophetic.
J.F. Martel in Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice: A Treatise, Critique, and Call to Action
Comments are welcome!
Q: Do you have any ”dont’s” for artists that you swear by?
On my studio wall
A: I don’t remember where I found this list, but most artists probably need to be reminded once in awhile. I certainly do!
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 346
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 my view… the most useful definition of creativity is the following one: people are artistically creative when they love what they are doing, know what they are doing, and actively engage in the tasks we call art-making. The three elements of creativity are thus loving, knowing, and doing; or heart, mind, and hands; or, as Buddhist teaching has it, great faith, great question, and great courage.
Eric Maisel in A Life in the Arts: Practical Guidance and Inspiration for Creative and Performing Artists
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 345
Barbara working on an interview. Photo: Maria Cox
*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 begin your journey as an artist from sacred motives, with dreams and high hopes, and also, perhaps, from a place of painful turmoil or other inner necessity. From these powerful drives comes your conscious decision to pursue a life in art, your resolve to call yourself an artist whatever the consequences. You are the one nodding in agreement when the painter John Baldessari says, “Art is about bloody-mindedness. It’s not about living the good life. In the end, it’s just you and the art.”
Eric Maisel in A Life in the Arts: Practical Guidance and Inspiration for Creative and Performing Artists
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 344
Untitled, c-print, 24 x 24,” edition of 5
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
I live in a most remarkable world, thick with mysteries. It all called to mind the British physicist Sir Arthur Eddington’s memorable explanation of how the universe works: “Something unknown is doing we don’t know what.”
But the best part is: I don’t need to know what.
… All I know for certain is that this is how I want to spend my life – collaborating to the best of my ability with forces of inspiration that I can neither see, nor prove, nor command, nor understand.
It’s a strange line of work, admittedly.
I cannot think of a better way to pass my days.
Elizabeth Gilbert in Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 349
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.
If Dostoyevsky, Flaubert, and so many others were able to create great artistic works, it was because they were able to pull off something few adults can find it in themselves to do: they were able to suspend all final judgments about life and the universe in order to play…
The spirit of work is concerned with self-preservation. It evaluates concepts and ideas in terms of their practical value. Building roads, raising walls, running elections, debating policies, educating the young – all of these are purposive actions ultimately aimed at upholding social structures, changing those structures, or promoting one’s place within society. The spirit of work is the home of the ego, the part of us that has evolved to survive and thrive. One of the conditions of the artistic creation seems to be the ability to move frame this frame of mind into the spirit of play. As many artist have said in varying ways, the trick is to forget everything and create for the sake of creating. No worthwhile play, of course, is without effort. As the painstaking care Flaubert put into every line of his books makes clear, the spirit of play is sometimes the most exciting. Nevertheless, art remains in essence a game, an activity undertaken for its own sake, no matter how difficult. Like all games, it requires the establishment of a perimeter within which things that one might take very seriously in ordinary life are given only relative value. The perimeter suspends all the conventional rules, allowing the artist to turn the world on its head and let the imagination roam freely.
No sooner have we entered the spirit of play than we see things differently.
J.F. Martel in Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice: A Treatise, Critique, and Call to Action
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 342
New York, NY
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
I work either way, you see – assisted or unassisted – because that is what you must do in order to live a fully creative life. I work steadily, and I always thank the process. Whether I am touched by grace or not, I thank creativity for allowing me to engage at all.
Because either way, it’s all kind of amazing – what we get to do, what we get to attempt, what we sometimes get to commune with.
Gratitude, always.
Always, gratitude.
Elizabeth Gilbert in Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 341
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.
The classic work of art is a form of life with its own bizarre consciousness. In the performing arts – theater, dance, music – this consciousness is not reducible to the minds of the performers onstage. The participants are parts of a spiritual organism that includes and transcends them. In our modern materialist mindset we naturally attribute the impression that a work speaks in its own voice to the intention of the author, who used it as a vehicle for her own ideas. But… works of art express much that their authors never intended to say: they exceed the limited views of those who bring them into being.
J.F. Martel in Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice: A Treatise, Critique, and Call to Action
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 340
Lower Manhattan
* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
What, do you suppose, are the lives of those who raise themselves above the level of the common herd? A continual struggle. A writer, for instance, must struggle against the laziness which he shares with the ordinary man when it comes to writing, because his genius demands to be heard, it is not merely of an empty desire for fame that he obeys, it is a matter of conscience. Let those who work coldly and calmly keep silence, for they have no conception of what it means to work under the spur of inspiration – the dread, the terror of rousing the sleeping lion whose roaring moves us to the very depth of our being. To sum up: be strong, simple, and true; here is an aim for every moment of the day, and it is always useful.
The Journal of Eugene Delacroix, edited by Hubert Wellington
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