Blog Archives
Pearls from artists* # 374
Barbara’a 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.
Finally, [John] Graham said, of all the arts, painting was the most difficult because one false move on a canvas could mean the difference between a great painting and a failure. A writer could always resurrect a word, but a line or a shape was so ephemeral that, once changed, it was almost always lost for good. “To create life one has to love. To create a great work of art one has to love truth with the passion of a maniac. If society does not perceive this love, perhaps humanity will.” …The artists… came away… feeling as though they were not aberrations but part of a long tradition of individuals who had ignored fashion to create culture.
Mary Gabriel in Ninth Street Women
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Pearls from artists* # 372
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.
Artists will, in their long education of sifting through what they like and respond to and what they don’t, find they “see” an artist’s work in the environment. They see a Corot or a Hopper. They know then that they have found a good subject because of the similarity of poetic attraction. They see with a set of limits or conventions that speak to them.
But as time goes on and you continue working, you find you do not consider those subjects any longer but they still register. They belong to someone else. You have found other affinities. Or perhaps more importantly you have found your own. You respond now to your own internal song. Art is about art as much as it is about nature. Everything we respond to has passed through our filter of artistic influences.
Ian Roberts in Creative Authenticity: 16 Principles to Clarify and Deepen Your Artistic Vision
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Pearls from artists* # 366
Studio entrance
* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
For some artists the studio becomes like a temple, a place that becomes invested with a sacred energy. I was looking at a book recently called Artist at Work. It featured the studios of several well-known American artists. In almost every case the space reminded me of a chapel in a cathedral. The physical, emotional, and even spiritual elevation the space created contributed to the work.
This is the home turf of your creative space. A space that stays undisturbed from the rest of daily forces. It stays open for your arrival. When you walk in you acquire a heightened readiness to begin. Your dining room table that must be cleared off for the evening meal will require more energy from you each time you begin. but a studio collects energy and focuses it, ready for your return. That space may be your garden, the view behind the house, or a desk in a bedroom that is reserved for your creative work. But it will help to secure it. It is your temple, the place where you focus your energies to express yourself. Your creative home base.
Ian Roberts in Creative Authenticity: 16 Principles to Clarify and Deepen Your Artistic Vision
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My blog turns 7 years old on July 15! Here is the very first post from July 15, 2012. Q: What does it take to be an artist, especially one living and working in New York?
Barbara’s Studio with works in progress.
A: The three Big P’s – Patience, Persistence, and Passion. Without all three you will not have the stamina to work tirelessly for very little external reward. You can expect help from no one.
There are so many obstacles to art-making and countless reasons to just give up. When you really think about it, it’s amazing that great art gets made at all. So why do we do it? Above all it’s about making our time on earth matter, about devotion to our innate gifts and love of our hard-fought creative process.
And, my God, it even gets harder as we get older! So what do we do? We dig in that much deeper. It’s a most noble and sacred calling – you know when you have it – and that’s what separates those of us who are in it for the long haul from the wimps, fakers, and hangers-on. I say to my fellow artists who continue to work despite the endless challenges, we are all true heroes!
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Lucky me to still be in the same studio! However, when you visit now, you see more tables full of pastels, more postcards on the walls, newer pastel paintings, etc. What I wrote seven years ago still rings true.
Most importantly, THANK YOU to my 42,000+ subscribers for taking this journey with me!
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Q: Where did you grow up and what were some early milestones or experiences that contributed to you becoming an artist later in life?
“The Sleeping Gypsy,” Henri Rousseau, oil on canvas, 1897
A: I grew up in a blue collar family in Clifton, New Jersey, a suburb about fifteen miles west of Manhattan. My father was a television repairman for RCA. My mother stayed home to raise my sister and me (at the time I had only one sister, Denise; my sister Michele was born much later). My parents were both first-generation Americans and no one in my extended family had gone to college yet. I was a smart kid who showed some artistic talent in kindergarten and earlier. I remember copying the Sunday comics, which in those days appeared in all the newspapers, and drawing small still lifes I arranged for myself. I have always been able to draw anything, as long as I can see it.
Denise, a cousin, and I enrolled in Saturday morning “art classes” at the studio of a painter named Frances Hulmes in Rutherford, NJ. I was about 6 years old. I continued the classes for 8 years and became a fairly adept oil painter. Since we lived so close to New York City, my mother often took us to museums, particularly to the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Natural History. Like so many young girls, I fell in love with Rousseau’s “The Sleeping Gypsy” and was astonished by Picasso’s “Guernica” when it was on long-term loan to MoMA. I have fond memories of studying the dioramas at the Museum of Natural History (they are still my favorite part of the museum). As far as I know, there were no artists in my family so, unfortunately, I had no role models. At the age of 14 my father decided that art was not a serious pursuit – declaring, it is “a hobby, not a profession” – and abruptly stopped paying for my Saturday morning lessons. With no financial or moral support to pursue art, I turned my attention to other interests, letting my artistic abilities go dormant.
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Pearls from artists* # 351
Barbara at work on “The Orator”
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
That art is apolitical does not mean that artists themselves can be excused from the political responsibilities that fall on others. It means rather that as a manifestation of eternal psychic force, each work of art goes farther and deeper than the limited perspective of any individual mind, including that of its author.
No artist can predict how his work will affect the world… The artist invests his entire personality into the work, but he does so as a means of expressing a vision that is transpersonal. Everything that makes him what he is informs the work, but the final result transcends all personal contingencies.
J.F. Martel in Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice: A Treatise, Critique, and Call to Action
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Q: Do you have any ”dont’s” for artists that you swear by?
On my studio wall
A: I don’t remember where I found this list, but most artists probably need to be reminded once in awhile. I certainly do!
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Pearls from artists* # 349
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.
If Dostoyevsky, Flaubert, and so many others were able to create great artistic works, it was because they were able to pull off something few adults can find it in themselves to do: they were able to suspend all final judgments about life and the universe in order to play…
The spirit of work is concerned with self-preservation. It evaluates concepts and ideas in terms of their practical value. Building roads, raising walls, running elections, debating policies, educating the young – all of these are purposive actions ultimately aimed at upholding social structures, changing those structures, or promoting one’s place within society. The spirit of work is the home of the ego, the part of us that has evolved to survive and thrive. One of the conditions of the artistic creation seems to be the ability to move frame this frame of mind into the spirit of play. As many artist have said in varying ways, the trick is to forget everything and create for the sake of creating. No worthwhile play, of course, is without effort. As the painstaking care Flaubert put into every line of his books makes clear, the spirit of play is sometimes the most exciting. Nevertheless, art remains in essence a game, an activity undertaken for its own sake, no matter how difficult. Like all games, it requires the establishment of a perimeter within which things that one might take very seriously in ordinary life are given only relative value. The perimeter suspends all the conventional rules, allowing the artist to turn the world on its head and let the imagination roam freely.
No sooner have we entered the spirit of play than we see things differently.
J.F. Martel in Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice: A Treatise, Critique, and Call to Action
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Pearls from artists* # 337
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.
I think society did a great disservice to artists when we started saying they were geniuses, instead of saying they had geniuses. That happened around the Renaissance, with the rise of a more rational and human-centered view of life. The gods and the mysteries fell away, and suddenly we put all credit and blame for creativity on the artists themselves – making the all-too-fragile humans completely responsible for the vagaries of inspiration.
In the process, we also venerated art and artists beyond their appropriate stations. The distinction of “being a genius” (and the rewards and status often associated with it) elevated creators into something like a priestly cast – and perhaps even into minor deities – which I think is a bit too much pressure for mere mortals, no matter how talented. That’s when artists start to really crack, driven mad and broken in half by the weight and weirdness of their gifts.
Elizabeth Gilbert in Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear
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Q: Do you believe in “the big break” for artists?
Barbara’s studio
A: Big breaks sometimes happen, but in my experience an artist’s life is made up of single-minded dedication, persistence, hard work, and lots of small breaks. I recently finished reading “Failing Up: How to Take Risks, Aim Higher, and Never stop Learning” by Leslie Odom, Jr. I like what he has to say to artists here:
“The biggest break is the one you give yourself by choosing to believe in your wisdom, in what you love, and in the gifts you have to offer the waiting world.”
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