Category Archives: Quotes

Pearls from artists* # 97

“No Cure for Insomnia,” pastel on sandpaper, 58″ x 38″

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

“Art should be independent of all clap-trap – should stand alone, and appeal to the artistic sense of eye or ear, without confounding this with emotions entirely foreign to it, as devotion, pity, love, patriotism, and the like,” he wrote in The Gentle Art of Making Enemies.

Take the picture of my mother, exhibited at the Royal Academy as an “Arrangement in Grey and Black.” Now that is what it is. To me it is interesting as a picture of my mother; but what can or ought the public to care about the identity of the portrait?

James McNeill Whistler quoted in Whistler: The Enraged Genius by Christopher Benfey in The New York Review of Books, June 5, 2014

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Posted in 2014, An Artist's Life, Art in general, Domestic Threats, Inspiration, Painting in General, Pearls from Artists, Quotes

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Pearls from artists* # 96

Jun 18

Posted by barbararachkoscoloreddust

Diane Arbus Revelations

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

My final day at the magic shop [in Disneyland, where he worked as a teenager], I stood behind the counter where I had pitched Svengali decks and the Incredible Shrinking Die, and I felt an emotional contradiction: nostalgia for the present. Somehow, even though I had stopped working only minutes earlier, my future fondness for the store was clear, and I experienced a sadness like that of looking at a photo of an old, favorite pooch. It was dusk by the time I left the shop, and I was redirected by a security guard who explained that a photographer was taking a picture and would I please use the side exit.

I did, and saw a small, thin woman with hacked brown hair aim her large-format camera directly at the dramatically lit castle, where white swans floated in the moat underneath the functioning drawbridge. Almost forty years later, when I was in my early fifties, I purchased that photo as a collectible, and it still hangs in my house. The photographer, it turned out, was Diane Arbus. I try to square the photo’s breathtaking romantic image with the rest of her extreme subject matter, and I assume she saw this facsimile of a castle as though it were a kitsch roadside statue of Paul Bunyan. Or perhaps she saw it as I did: beautiful.

Quoted by A.D. Coleman in Photocritical, May 28, 2014, from Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life by Steve Martin

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

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Pearls from artists* # 95

Jun 11

Posted by barbararachkoscoloreddust

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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Q: Why do people need art in their daily lives?

May 24

Posted by barbararachkoscoloreddust

With Ida Bagus Anom, Mas, Bali; Photo: Donna Tang

A: That is for each person to decide, but as someone who devotes every waking moment to my work and to becoming a better artist, I cannot imagine my life without art.

I will tell you a little about what art has done for me. In my younger days boredom was a strong motivator. I left the active duty Navy out of boredom. I couldn’t bear not being intellectually challenged (most of my jobs consisted of paper-pushing), not using my flying skills (at 27 I was a licensed commercial pilot and Boeing-727 flight engineer), and not developing my artistic talents. In what surely must be a first, the Navy turned me into a hard-working and disciplined artist. And once I left the Navy there was no plan B. There was no time to waste. It was “full speed ahead.”

Art is a calling. You do not need to be told this if you are among those who are called. It’s all about “the work,” that all-consuming focus of an artist’s life. If a particular activity doesn’t seem likely to make me a better artist, I tend to avoid it. I work hard to nourish and protect my gifts. As artists we invent our own tasks, learn whatever we need in order to progress, and complete projects in our own time. It is life lived at its freest.

My art-making has led me to fascinating places: Mexico, Guatemala, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, France, England, Italy, Bali, Java, Sri Lanka, and more; and to in-depth studies of intriguing subjects: drawing, color, composition, art and art history, the art business, film and film history, photography, mythology, literature, music, jazz and jazz history, and archaeology, particularly that of ancient Mesoamerica (Olmec, Zapotec, Mixtec, Aztec, Maya, etc.). And this rich mixture continually grows! For anyone wanting to spend their time on earth learning and meeting new challenges, there is no better life!

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Posted in 2014, An Artist's Life, Art in general, Bali and Java, Creative Process, Guatemala, Inspiration, Mexico, Photography, Quotes, Sri Lanka, 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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Category Archives: Quotes

Pearls from artists* # 97

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Pearls from artists* # 95

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Pearls from artists* # 93

Q: Why do people need art in their daily lives?

Pearls from artists* # 92

Pearls from artists* # 90

Pearls from artists* # 89

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