Category Archives: Pearls from Artists
Pearls from artists* # 700
*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’s talk about courage now.
If you already have the courage to bring forth the jewels that are hidden within you, terrific. You’re probably already doing really interesting things with your life, and don’t need this book. Rock on.
But if you don’t have the courage, let’s try to get you some. To use creative living is a path for the brave. We all know this. And we all know when courage dies, creativity dies with it. We all know that fear is a desolate boneyard where our dreams go to desiccate in the hot sun. This is common knowledge; sometimes we just don’t know what to do about it.
Elizabeth Gilbert in Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 698
With “Overlord,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 70” x 50”
*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 you learn to trust your own voice, it is like stepping up to claim your rightful place in the universe. Remaining true to yourself as an artist is one of the most difficult things to do: temptations to compromise are everywhere. It is through standing in the fire that you build and maintain your core essence. You cease to be afraid of your largeness, your power. You begin to wield your audacity in service of a vision that is larger than yourself. In doing so, you empower others to do the same. Every day, that call to rise to your highest self comes for you, and you get to choose. You can step over the threshold to locate the voice that you know, deep in your gut, has been becoming you… for years, or even decades. ‘Here I am,’ it says. ‘You sought me out. You are finally ready. Let’s do this!’
– Kate Kretz in Art From Your Core: A Holistic Guide to Visual Voice
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 697
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Serendipity (or synchronicity) is an occurrence of events that appear significantly related but have no discernible causal connection. The concept of synchronicity was developed by psychiatrist Carl Jung in the early 1900s. He defined it as ‘meaningful coincidences.’ They seem like ‘signs’ or ‘clues’ from the universe that provide missing pieces to your puzzle. Your brain is busy trying to solve your Art problem. You are open, tuned into what your unconscious already knows, and is trying to help you access. Thousands of thoughts a day pass through your brain as you navigate the world, but you suddenly see, hear, or think a flash of something that triggers your unconscious to put on the brake, and call out, ‘Wait! Stop! That’s it! That’s what we need!”
Kate Kretz in Art From Your Core: A Holistic Guide to Visual Voice
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 696
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Although it’s important to make communities with like-minded people — people who are your age, your generation, who are working on projects that have resonance with yours — I am a firm believer in crossing generations to find mentorship and inspiration, and a sense of furthering the craft. So I’d say that as you begin to seek mentorship, be creative about where you look. Look in unlikely places, and make it more likely that you will cross boundaries and reach a wider, more culturally and intellectually diverse audience.
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”
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 695
Barbara’s paintings on exhibit in Mumbai, 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.
Artists are known to feel intense highs and lows. Being a channel for such copious amounts of emotion is overwhelming. The input we absorb and the output we emit can feel as though it might annihilate us, as if our hearts might explode with joy, or be crushed with sorrow. We were all handed a special gift at birth, a fire to be tended. It flares and wanes over the course of our existence. We spend our livings trying to keep it burning and fed, without allowing it to consume us.
Kate Kretz in Art From Your Core: A Holistic Guide to Visual Voice
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* #694
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Long ago, when I was in my insecure twenties, I met a clever, independent, creative, and powerful woman in her mid-seventies, who offered me a superb piece of life wisdom.
She said: “We all spend our twenties and thirties trying so hard to be perfect, because we’re so worried about what other people will think of us. Then we get into our forties and fifties, and we finally start to be free, because we’re so worried decide that we don’t give a damn about what anyone thinks of us. But you won’t be completely free until you reach your sixties and seventies, when you realize this liberating truth—nobody was ever thinking about you, anyhow.”
They aren’t. They weren’t. They never were.
People are mostly thinking about themselves. People don’t have time to worry about what you’re doing, or how well you’re doing it, because they’re all caught up in their own dramas. People’s attention may be drawn to you for a moment (if you succeed or fail spectacularly and publicly, for instance), but that attention will soon enough revert back to where it’s always been—on themselves. While it may seem lonely and horrible at first to imagine that you aren’t anyone’s first order of business, there is also a great release to be found in this idea. You are free, because everyone is too busy fussing over themselves to worry that much about you.
Go be whomever you want to be, then.
Do whatever you want to do.
Pursue whatever fascinates you and brings you to life.
Create whatever you want to create—and let it be stupendously imperfect, because it’s exceedingly likely that no one will even notice.
And that’s awesome.
Elizabeth Gilbert in Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 693
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Earlier I wrote that I as an artist must concern myself with painting and not waste energy on trying to decipher other people’s intentions or motives. I still believe this to be correct.
(My main purpose in life is to paint, this is my profession. I am most happy when I am alone in the studio working. The other problems of politics exist outside my studio.)
note: I am not sure of this. I am sure of one thing that I am most happy when I am alone working in the studio. The distance between art + politics is one of grey. I have thought of my involvement in art as being one of combat—the paintings are weapons designed to destroy oppressors i.e., the establishment. Art is none of This! Art is Art.
A painting does not represent anything but itself. It shouldn’t look like anything else or make for any allusions. A painting is a painting just as a Rose is a Rose! May God bless Gertrude Stein!
Jack Whitten Notes From the Woodshed
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 692
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Claiming space, money, and time to do our work requires fortitude. We need to say ‘no’ to projects and people fighting for our attention. We just follow our work through changes, even when it is comfortable, or in other people’s interests, for our work to stay the same. If we want to expand our careers, we get rejected… a lot. But artists are like sharks; we must keep moving to survive, creating authentic, original work as we outgrow it to evolve as human beings.
Kate Kretz in Art From Your Core: A Holistic Guide to Visual Voice
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 691
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.
Repeatedly standing in the fire is a requirement of the art life. The initial act of choosing this vocation requires courage, as does sticking with it when others think you should give up. We prioritize an endeavor that strikes the rest of the world as absurd. We repeatedly risk failure and frustration in the drive to grow our practice. We are visionaries at the front of the breaking wave in our culture, calling out difficult realities that no one wants to think about, and we are often beaten back in attempts to silence us for that role.
Kate Kretz in Art From Your Core: A Holistic Guide to Visual Voice
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 690
“Showman,” 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.
PC: And today, don’t you think a picture communicates primarily through its metiére? A mysterious transubstantiation takes place between the thing itself and the way in which our eye receives it. Or, more precisely, a painter’s metiére has life in it, as if it were still laden with the artist’s passion. You feel his pulse beating in it, his need to register the victory of his presence in physical space but outside the reach of time.
HM: Every painter with real talent has his own metiére, a way of laying on the paint with relish, with a certain voluptuous feel, which means that you could say that metiére of this or that painter is like velvet, or satin, or taffeta. As to manner… No one knows where this comes from. It’s magic. It’s not something you can learn. There are very rich paintings, like those of Cézanne, and others very lightly painted that have real density all the same: Velazquez, for example, with his Phillip IV. He uses a scumble for the landscape, which is very beautiful and solid with matiére—the scumble is so well proportioned that it combines with the background and harmonizes perfectly; the Rubens painting on wood in the Louvre, Portrait of Hélène Fourmont and Her Children, is painted mainly in colored oils, yet how deep and solid the colors seem!
Chatting with Henri Matisse: The Lost 1941 Interview, Henri Matisse and Pierre Courthion, edited by Serge Guilbaut
Comments are welcome!
barbararachkoscoloreddust.com 