Category Archives: Pearls from Artists

Pearls from artists* # 95

Negombo, Sri Lanka

* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.

Not enough people believe in the cracks in the universe that you have to wiggle into to get anything new established. There are cracks – places that are not filled in that need to be filled in, so the edifice doesn’t crumble. And if you believe in the arts passionately, they fit into those cracks, because without those connective tissues of understanding all we are are people who go to war every so often.

Zelda Fichandler in Conversations with Anne: Twenty-four Interviews

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Posted in 2014, An Artist's Life, Art in general, Creative Process, Inspiration, Pearls from Artists, Photography, Quotes, Sri Lanka, Travel

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Pearls from artists* # 94

Jun 4

Posted by barbararachkoscoloreddust

Working on “False Friends” Photo: Diana Feit

* 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 work of art which inspires us comes from no quibbling or uncertain man. It is the manifest of a very positive nature in great enjoyment, and at the very moment the work was done.

It is not enough to have thought great things before doing the work. The brush stroke at the moment of contact carries inevitably the exact state of being of the artist at that exact moment into the work, and there it is, to be seen and read by those who can read such signs, and to be read later by the artist himself, with perhaps some surprise, as a revelation of himself.

For an artist to be interesting to us he must be interesting to himself. He must have been capable of intense feeling, and capable of profound contemplation.

He who has contemplated has met with himself, is in a state to see into the realities beyond the surfaces of his subject. Nature reveals to him, and, seeing and feeling intensely, he paints, and whether he wills it or not each brush stroke is an exact record of such as he was at the exact moment the stroke was made.

The Art Spirit by Robert Henri

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Posted in 2014, An Artist's Life, Art in general, Art Works in Progress, Black Paintings, Creative Process, Inspiration, New York, NY, Painting in General, Pastel Painting, Pearls from Artists, Photography, Quotes, Studio, Working methods

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Pearls from artists* # 93

May 28

Posted by barbararachkoscoloreddust

Chalcatzingo (Mexico)

* 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 times in between things are always very hard for me, and there have been times when I felt that I’d never have an idea again, or that I’ve explored everything that I possibly can because as the years go on you have the backpack of your history. How do I find something new to work with? I read a beautiful book by Mable Dodge Luhan, who lived in New Mexico and started Ghost Ranch in the 1920s. She married a Native American, Tony Luhan, who lived in the Taos pueblo. She said that she noticed in the pueblo that in the winter everybody had very soft moccasins and they tiptoed around. They hardly talked at all and it was very, very quiet. She asked why they did that, and they said, “Mother Earth needs to rest. We are making it so that Mother Earth can rest so that in spring she can come forth.” I felt that that was so comforting; to actually nurture those times where it seems so empty, to have faith that something will happen if you savor those times, not try to push against them or fight them.

Meredith Monk quoted in Conversations with Anne: Twenty-four Interviews, by Anne Bogart

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Posted in 2014, An Artist's Life, Art in general, Creative Process, Inspiration, Mexico, Pearls from Artists, Photography, Quotes, Travel, Working methods

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Pearls from artists* # 92

May 21

Posted by barbararachkoscoloreddust

Untitled iPad photo

* 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 avoid disappointment in art, one mustn’t treat it as a career. Despite whatever great artistic sense and talent a man might possess, he ought to seek money and power elsewhere to avoid forsaking his art when he fails to receive proper compensation for his gifts and efforts.

My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk

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Posted in 2014, An Artist's Life, Art in general, Inspiration, Mexico, Pearls from Artists, Photography, Quotes

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Pearls from artists* # 91

May 14

Posted by barbararachkoscoloreddust

Mexico City

* 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’m struggling a lot financially, struggling a lot to keep my group going, struggling to keep going in every way, but I feel like I try so hard because every time that I’m able to go to a college or to be with young people they need to know that there is this “anything is possible” idea. They need to at least see that. I intend to continue nevertheless. Somehow that seems very important right now. It isn’t that you go to school just to find out everything you need to get a job or something. We never thought of what we did as a job. We thought of it as our work, our life. Then there was a certain point, I think, in the eighties where people thought of their identity as this and then what you did was a job. There was a separation between the two things.

I pray that now there will be some loosening and we’ll feel this sense of, just as you said so beautifully, space and breath. No one’s breathing. That’s why I feel that doing art is so important. It makes you dig in your heels even more. It’s a life-and-death kind of thing. What is the other alternative? The other alternative is that you’re living in a culture that’s basically trying to distract you from the moment. It’s trying to distract you from your life. It’s trying to distract you from who you are, and it’s trying to numb you, and it’s trying to make you buy things. Now, I don’t really think that that’s what life is about. I’m excited because now I have this real sense that there’s this counterculture, you could say, or counter-impulse. it’s not for-and-against, but there is a kind of dialectic where there’s a kind of resistance you can actually hit against, or at least address in one way or the other.

Meredith Monk quoted in Conversations with Anne: Twenty-four Interviews, by Anne Bogart

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Posted in 2014, An Artist's Life, Art in general, Creative Process, Inspiration, Mexico, Pearls from Artists, Photography, Quotes, Travel

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Pearls from artists* # 90

May 7

Posted by barbararachkoscoloreddust

Walking on Spiral Jetty in the Great Salt Lake

* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.

While it is not true that only artists understand art, for there are in every generation some people who not only understand it but also enhance its reach by appreciation, there is a freemasonry among us. We stand shoulder to shoulder, generation to generation.

Anne Truitt in Turn: The Journal of an Artist

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Posted in 2014, An Artist's Life, Art in general, Inspiration, Pearls from Artists, Photography, Quotes, Travel

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Pearls from artists* # 89

Apr 30

Posted by barbararachkoscoloreddust

Some of Barbara’s pastels

* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.

Dear Diary:

On a drifty Manhattan stroll
The kind that unearths magical treasures
I made a right turn off of Houston
Onto Bowery
And as it became Third Avenue
I came upon this old art store
That creaked hello
Its warped wooden shelves
Held new paints
A little dusty from the old building
But whose colors were deeper
Than I’d ever seen before

And at the back of the store
Up a narrow stairway
Was a tiny room
And behind a long table stood three people
(Probably artists)
Who could get me any paper I desired
Paper with designs
To collage with
Hot press, cold press
100 gram, 600 gram paper
To draw and paint on
Any kind of paper I’d ever want
Templates from heaven

And over my right shoulder
Was a tall window
Overlooking the glorious city
That has held this little room
Tenderly in its arms
All these years

And as I hugged
My rolled up package of paper
And went back downstairs
The old stairs seemed to gently whisper
“Come back soon,
We’ll keep each other alive”

And stepping outside
Third Avenue seemed more spacious
And I took a deep breath
As the world
Kaleidoscoped
With possibilities
Lovingly wrapped up
By three kind artists
At the top of the world.

“Art Supplies From Heaven,“ by Judith Ellen Sanders, published in “Metropolitan Diary,” NY Times, April 6, 2014

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Posted in 2014, An Artist's Life, Art in general, Creative Process, Inspiration, New York, NY, Painting in General, Pastel Painting, Pearls from Artists, Photography, Quotes, Studio, Working methods

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Pearls from artists* # 88

Apr 23

Posted by barbararachkoscoloreddust

Teotihuacan

* 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 men like Ayers, it occurs to me, this temple is civilization. The masses, slaves, peasants, and foot soldiers exist in the cracks of its flagstones, ignorant even of their ignorance. Not so the great statesmen, scientists, artists, and most of all, the composers of the age, any age, who are civilization’s architects, masons, and priests. Ayers sees our role is to make civilization ever more resplendent. My employer’s profoundest, or only, wish is to create a minaret that inheritors of Progress a thousand years from now will point to and say, “Look, there is Vyvyan Ayers!”

How vulgar, this hankering after immortality, how vain, how false. Composers are merely scribblers of cave paintings. One writes music because winter is eternal and because, if one didn’t, the wolves and blizzards would be at one’s throat all the sooner.

David Mitchell in Cloud Atlas

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Posted in 2014, An Artist's Life, Art in general, Creative Process, Inspiration, Mexico, Pearls from Artists, Photography, Quotes, Travel

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Pearls from artists* # 87

Apr 16

Posted by barbararachkoscoloreddust

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.

One evening, after one false start too many, I just gave up. Sitting at a bar, feeling a bit burned out by work and by life in general, I just started drawing on the backs of business cards for no reason. I didn’t really need a reason. I just did it because it was there, because it amused me in a kind of random, arbitrary way.

Of course it was stupid. Of course it was not commercial. Of course it wasn’t going to go anywhere. Of course it was a complete and utter waste of time. But in retrospect, it was this built-in futility that gave it its edge. Because it was the exact opposite of all the “Big Plans” my peers and I were used to making. It was so liberating not to have to think about all of that, for a change.

It was so liberating to be doing something that didn’t have to have some sort of commercial angle, for a change.

It was so liberating to be doing something that didn’t have to impress anybody, for a change.

It was so liberating to be free of ambition, for a change.

It was so liberating to have something that belonged just to me and no one else, for a change.

It was so liberating to feel complete sovereignty, for a change. To feel complete freedom, for a change. To have something that didn’t require somebody else’s money, or somebody else’s approval, for a change.

And of course, it was then, and only then, that the outside world started paying attention.

The sovereignty you have over your work will inspire far more people than the actual content ever will. How your own sovereignty inspires other people to find their own sovereignty, their own sense of freedom and possibility, will give the work far more power than the work’s objective merits ever will.

Your idea doesn’t have to be big. It just has to be yours alone. The more the idea is yours alone, the more freedom you have to do something really amazing.

The more amazing, the more people will click with your idea. The more people click with your idea, the more this little thing of yours will snowball into a big thing.

That’s what doodling on the backs of business cards taught me.

Hugh MacLeod in Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity

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Posted in 2014, An Artist's Life, Art in general, Black Paintings, Creative Process, Inspiration, New York, NY, Pastel Painting, Pearls from Artists, Photography, Quotes, Studio

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Pearls from artists* # 86

Apr 9

Posted by barbararachkoscoloreddust

“Broken,” 38″ x 58,” 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.

When I’m working from a photograph, a transparency, or direct observation, I am always amazed at how much more I see as the painting progresses. After I think I have completely perceived a particular area, something else reveals itself. As the work continues, the level of awareness deepens. The process takes it’s own time. I have come to accept that time and not fight it. I know that when I begin my work, no matter how hard I try, I’ll never observe as much on the first day as I will on the last. Like life, the development will not be rushed, nor will there be full realization before completion.

Dr. Leopold Caligor, a prominent New York psychiatrist, says that he listens to tapes of recorded sessions with patients, he hears new things and gains deeper insights. Each time he listens, more information is uncovered. This process is repeated until understanding is complete.

Audrey Flack in Art & Soul: Notes on Creating

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Category Archives: Pearls from Artists

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