Category Archives: Pearls from Artists
Pearls from artists* # 224
“Poker Face,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 38″ x 58″ image, 50″ x 70″ framed
* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
… wise writers decline to engage in debates over the right way to read their words. T.S. Eliot was once approached with a question about a cryptic line from his poem “Ash-Wednesday”: “Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree.” What did the line mean? The poet replied: “I mean, ‘Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree .” Creating a text, Eliot seems to be saying, like having a child, only means bringing something into the world. It doesn’t include the power to control it’s destiny.
Adam Kirsch in “Can You Read a Book the Wrong Way?”, The New York Times Book Review, Sept. 27, 2016.
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Pearls from artists* # 223
“Epiphany,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 38″ x 58″
* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
This is precisely the time when artists get to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.
I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge – even wisdom. Like art.
Toni Morrison quoted in Brainpickings, Nov. 20, 2016
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Pearls from artists* # 222
Washington, DC
* 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 always had a sense of being in this for keeps. If your health lasts you. And you’re fortunate enough to have the days at your disposal so you can keep doing this. I never had the sense that there was an end. That there was a retirement or that there was a jackpot.
Leinard Cohen in Brain Pickings Weekly, Nov. 13, 2016
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Pearls from artists* # 221
Walking on Spiral Jetty in September 2011
* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Andre Malraux famously cherished the idea of a museum without walls. In a way, places like Spiral Jetty are jails without walls. They are always about time, about how long they can detain or hold you. I remember the governor of a US prison saying, of a particularly violent inmate, that he already had way more time than he would ever be able to do. That’s exactly how the Jetty looked – like it had more time than it could ever do – even though, relatively speaking, it had hardly begun to put in any serious time.
Geoff Dyer in White Sands: Experiences from the Outside World
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Pearls from artists* # 220
Lima, Peru
* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
It is the job of the writer to say, look at that. To point. To shine a light. But it isn’t that which is already bright and beckoning that needs our attention. We develop our sensitivity – to use John Berger’s phrase, our “ways of seeing” – in order to bear witness to what is. Our tender hopes and dreams, our joy, frailty, grief, fear, longing, desire – every human being is a landscape. The empathic imagination glimpses the woman working the cash register at a convenience store, the man coming out of the bathroom at the truck stop, the mother chasing her toddler up and down the aisle of the airplane, and knows what it sees. Look at that. This human catastrophe, this accumulation of ordinary blessings, of unbearable losses. And still, a ray of sunlight, a woman doing the wash, a carcass of beef. The life that holds us. The life we know.
Dani Shapiro in Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life
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Pearls from artists* # 219
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.
There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action. And because there is only one of you in all time, the expression is unique. If you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not hear it. It is not your business to determine how good it is; nor how valuable it is; nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours, clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even need to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine satisfaction, a blessed unrest that keep us marching and makes us more alive than the others.
Martha Graham to Agnes de Mille in Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life by Dani Shapiro
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Pearls from artists* # 218
Untouched 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.
Let go of every should or shouldn’t running through your mind when you start. Be willing to stand at the base of a new mountain, and with humility and grace, bow to it. Allow yourself to understand that it’s bigger than you, or anything you can possibly imagine. You’re not sure of your path. You’re not even sure where the next step will take you. When you begin, whisper to yourself: I don’t know.
Dani Shapiro in Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life
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Pearls from artists* # 217
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.
This is true for most artists, not only writers.
What I do know – what I’ve spent the past couple of decades learning about myself – is that if I’m not writing, I’m not well. If I’m not writing, the world around me is slowly leached of its color. I am crabby with my husband, short-tempered with my kid and more inclined to see small things wrong with my house (the crack in the ceiling, the smudge prints along the staircase wall) than look out the window at the blazing maple tree, the family of geese making its way across our driveway. If I’m not writing, my heart hardens, rather than lifts.
Dani Shapiro in Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life
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Pearls from artists* # 216
Working on “Charade”
* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
This is true for all artists, not only writers.
The writing life requires courage, patience, persistence, empathy, openness, and the ability to deal with rejection. It requires the willingness to be alone with oneself. To be gentle with oneself. To look at the world without blinders on. To observe and withstand what one sees. To be disciplined, and at the same time, take risks. To be willing to fail – not just once, but again and again, over the course of a lifetime. “Ever tried, ever failed,” Samuel Beckett once wrote. “No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” It requires what the great editor Ted Solotoroff once called endurability. It is this quality, most of all, that I think of when I look around a classroom at a group of aspiring writers. Some of them will be more gifted than others. Some of them will be driven, ambitious for success or fame, rather than by the determination to do their best possible work. But of the students I have taught, it is not necessarily the most gifted, or the ones most focused on imminent literary fame (I think of these as short sprinters), but the ones who endure, who are still writing, decades later.
Dani Shapiro in Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life
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Pearls from artists* # 214
South Beach
* 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 number of scientists (including myself) have confirmed that the personality trait “openness to experience” is a potent contributor to creative thinking and achievement. Those who are high in this attribute tend to be imaginative, curious, perceptive, creative, artistic, thoughtful, and intellectual. They are driven to explore their inner worlds of ideas, emotions, sensations, and dreams, and to constantly seek out new experiences in their environment that will impart personal growth and allow them to further make meaning out of their lives.
Scott Barry Kaufman in “A Capacity for Genius,” Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart 50th Anniversary, July 22 – August 27, 2016 Playbill
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