Category Archives: Quotes
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!
Q: Many artists can’t bear to face “a blank canvas.” How do you feel about starting a new piece?
A: That’s an interesting question because I happen to be reading The War of Art by Steven Pressfield and this morning I saw this:
You know, Hitler wanted to be an artist. At eighteen he took his inheritance, seven hundred kronen, and moved to Vienna to live and study. He applied to the Academy of Fine Arts and later to the school of architecture. Ever see one of his paintings? Neither have I. Resistance beat him. Call it overstatement but I’ll say it anyway: it was easier for Hitler to start World War II than it was for him to face a blank square of canvas.
I’ve never understood this fear of “the blank canvas” because I am always excited about beginning a new painting. When you think about it, every professional artist can say, “In the history of the planet no one has ever made what I am about to make!” Once again I am looking at something new on my easel, even if it is only a blank 40” x 60” piece of sandpaper clipped to a slightly larger piece of foam core. Unlike artists who are paralyzed before “a blank canvas,” I am energized by the imagined possibilities of all that empty space! I spend up to three months on a painting so this experience of looking at a blank piece of paper on my easel happens four or five times a year at most. Excluding travel to remote places, which is essential to my work and endlessly fascinating, the first day I get to spend blocking in a new painting is the most exhilarating part of my whole creative process. This is art-making at its freest! I select the pastel colors quickly, without thinking about them, first imagining them, then feeling, looking, and reacting intuitively to what I’ve done, always correcting and trying to make the painting look better.
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!
Pearls from artists* # 689
*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 what I wish someone had told me years ago:
The art world is not a meritocracy. Like the world at large, it is a system based on hoarded capital and exploited labor. This system owes you nothing, even if you have extraordinary talent, work tremendously hard, never give up, and do all the right things. There are no ‘extra points’ for effort, earnestness, dedication, or sacrifice.
(We ALL think WE are going to be the exception.)
Unless you have fantastic connections or pedigree, after you build and maintain the basics of making strong work and getting the word out, a great deal depends on luck. Many of the artists you admire are likely living difficult lives you might not be willing to live, making sacrifices you might not be willing to make. Many who appear to support themselves with their work are in fact, partially or fully supported by spouses, family money, or jobs they do not discuss. They keep these jobs secret because some art world players refuse to validate your work if you are not ‘seriously committed’ enough to be a full-time artist. (Of course, artists who were not born wealthy need validation from these very players to be ABLE to create full-time.)
Kate Kretz in Art From Your Core: A Holistic Guide to Visual Voice
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 688
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Many artists see their studio practice as a religion. Like any other faith, it has rituals, beliefs, devotions, visionaries, martyrs, and even miracles. Our souls have a need to position themselves in the giant scheme of the universe, and art, like spiritual conviction, helps us do that. It allows us to decipher and process the complexities of the world around us. It can make us better humans by telling stories and sharing points of view that stoke compassion, understanding, and empathy. It holds the potential to redeem both the maker and the viewer, transcending quotidian dullness by evoking a deep significance we had forgotten.
Kate Kretz in Art From Your Core: A Holistic Guide to Visual Voice
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 687
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.
PC: Talking about sales, when it comes down to it, don’t you find that most of the time, the true art lovers, the disinterested amateurs, are the ones who can’t afford to buy?
HM: Yes, the man who buys, buys for speculative reasons, and after a year or two says to himself – what’s my painting worth? – he wants to cash in. But who knows whether a picture can be sold profitably at any given point? I have friends who begrudged me the fact that I persuaded them to buy a beautiful painting.
Henri Matisse in Chatting With Matisse: The Lost 1941 Interview, Henri Matisse with Pierre Courthion, edited by Serge Guilbault
Comments are welcome!
barbararachkoscoloreddust.com 