Category Archives: Quotes
Pearls from artists* # 293
Studio with works in progress
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Works of art specify no immediate action or limited use. They are like gateways, where the visitor can enter the space of the painter, or the time of the poet, to experience whatever rich domain the artist has fashioned. But the visitor must come prepared: if he brings a vacant mind or deficient sensibility, he will see nothing. Adherent meaning is therefore largely a matter of conventional shared experience, which it is the artist’s privilege to rearrange and enrich under certain limitations.
George Kubler in The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things
Comments are welcome!
Q: As a full-time artist what are you thankful for?
The list
A: Recently I came across one of my Facebook posts from approximately five years ago. Everything on the list above still rings true, perhaps now even moreso.
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 292
“White Star,” 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.
… many tools may share qualities of fine design with works of art. We are in the presence of a work of art only when it has no preponderant instrumental use, and when its technical and rational foundations are not pre-eminent. When the technical organization or the rational order of a thing overwhelms our attention, it is an object of use. On this point Lodoli anticipated the doctrine of functionalists of our century when he declared in the eighteenth century that only the necessary is beautiful. Kant, however, more correctly said on the same point that the necessary cannot be judged beautiful, but only right or consistent. In short, a work of art is as useless as a tool is useful. Works of art are as unique and irreplaceable as tools are common and expendable.
George Kubler in The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 291
“The Sovereign,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 58″ x 38″ image, 70″ x 50″ 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.
Intuitively, we must be truthful to our vision, our conception. Intellectually, we must concentrate on importance. In other words, let us be no all-eater, no all-reader, no all-believer, let us be selective instead of being curious.
… Quality in art is more permanent than any propaganda associated with it.
Joseph Albers in Truthfulness in Art in Joseph Albers in Mexico, edited by Lauren Hinkson
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Pearls from artists* # 290
“Dichotomy,” 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.
Rational functionalism is technique,
Irrational functionalism is art.
Art is creation
It can be based on but is independent of knowledge.
We can study art through nature,
but art is more than nature.
Art is spirit,
and has a life of its own.
Art in its nature is anti-historical
because creative work is looking forward.
It can be connected with tradition
but grows, consciously or unconsciously, out of an artist’s mentality.
Art is neither imitation nor repetition
but art is revelation.
Joseph Albers in Truthfulness in Art in Joseph Albers in Mexico, edited by Lauren Hinkson
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 289
“Danzante,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 38” x 58”, in progress
*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 do not think it the business of a poet to become a guru. It is his business to write poetry, and to do that he must remain open and vulnerable. We grow through relationships of every kind, but most of all through a relationship that takes the whole person. And it would be pompous and artificial to make an arbitrary decision to shut the door.
The problem is to keep a balance, not to fall to pieces. In keeping her balance in her last years Louise Bogan stopped writing poems, or nearly. It was partly, I feel sure, that the detachment demanded of the critic (and especially his absorption in analyzing the work of others) is diametrically opposed to the kind of detachment demanded of the poet in relationship to his own work. We are permitted to become detached only after the shock of an experience has been taken in, allowed to “happen” in the deepest sense. Detachment comes with examining the experience by means of writing the poem.
May Sarton in Journal of a Solitude: The intimate diary of a year in the life of a creative woman
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Pearls from artists* # 288
Los Cabos, 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.
I always forget how important the empty days are, how important it may be sometimes not to expect to produce anything, even a few lines in a journal. I am still pursued by a neurosis about work inherited from my father. A day where one has not pushed oneself to the limit seems a damaged damaging day, a sinful day. Not so! The most valuable thing we can do for the psyche, occasionally, is to let it rest, wander, live in the changing light of a room, not try to be or do anything whatever.
May Sarton in Journal of a Solitude: The intimate diary of a year in the life of a creative woman
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 287
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.
“To go back and introduce into all the schools art, to cut down on sports but bring arts, philosophy back into all educational systems,” he said. “And that’s what’s being cut everywhere. And I think that’s one of the sad and tragic parts of where we are. Education is the resistance to everything that is bad today.”
Jonas Mekas quoted in Want to Be Happy? Think Like an Old Person, by John Leland, The New York Times, Dec. 29, 2017.
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 286
Museo de Antropología de Xalapa
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
All real art is or was modern in its time,
daring and new,
demonstrating a constant change in seeing and feeling.
If revival had been a perpetual virtue,
we would still live in caves and earth pits.
In art, tradition is to create,
not to revive.
Joseph Albers quoted in Ruins in Reverse by Lauren Hinkson in Joseph Albers in Mexico
Comments are welcome!
Q: How do you stay motivated to create new work?
“False Friends,” 50” x 70,” one of Cheryll and John’s pastel paintings
A: There are many reasons to continue to make art. First, I am fascinated by my months- if not years-long creative process. It begins with travel to remote destinations and ends in framed pastel paintings in my studio, hanging in galleries, at art fairs, in collectors’ homes, etc. Each new pastel painting is another thread in an expanding tapestry that is my entire body of work. It’s fascinating to never know where the process, or the paintings, will end up nor who will be touched by the work.
My pastel paintings continue to garner appreciation among a growing list of collectors. Here’s a recent email from a couple that has been collecting my work from the beginning.
hello barbara,
merry christmas!
we are thrilled and thrilled and thrilled for your good news from miami and naples.
. . . “tense peace, a tumultuous stillness” . . .
we know we love you and we love your work.
how lucky are we to live with your work in our home, in our lives.
we love to read how others describe it.
thanks for sharing.
happy us to have you and your art in our lives,
love to you,
john & cheryll
your work stopped me in my tracks decades ago.
the sight of your work never left me.
i knew that i had to have it near me at some time, no matter what the cost.
i began immediately to negotiate with john.
you know the story . . .
i promised that i would not buy a single thing for five years if i could have one piece of your art.
i held true for the five years and beyond, adding three more pieces of your work.
if we had the wherewithal, your work would be on every floor.
there is never a day that goes by without thinking how brilliant that work is and how it has enriched our deepest sense of visual joy.
we see the rain pouring down, the snow falling, the clouds scudding by, in false friends.
i admit, we don’t allow the sun to shine on them. i couldn’t bear for her to be damaged.
your thoughtful, brilliant words kept us from changing the highly-reflective plexi to something that would have dulled the drama of us walking in front of and being a part of the work.
we still have those words.
it took about one-half of one second for my thinking to change.
and, man, are we grateful.
it never occurred to us that your work wouldn’t be sought after.
always, we walk into a museum and see your work on the walls.
on the walls of the hemi-cycle at the corcoran.
on the walls of the whitney.
on the walls of the met breurer.
on any large white space that would allow each piece to breathe.
we have always known, deep in our marrow that your work is singular.
you have always had our hearts . . . since the second i walked into the torpedo factory, a first-grade teacher with a first-grade teacher’s salary, and knew that i’d sell my honda civic and walk rather than not have in reality, the frogs thought they were men (i know that the title of the piece is something like that . . . the decades have blurred the words).
so, we waited and then . . .
sigh . . .
all the best to you.
we are excited out of our ever-loving minds for you.
but . . . we’ve always known . . .
love,
c & j
Comments are welcome!
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