Blog Archives
Pearls from artists* # 724
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on
Hokusai
From the age of six, I had a passion for drawing the form of objects. By the age of about fifty, I had published an infinity of drawings, but nothing I produced before the age of seventy is worth counting. It was at the age of seventy-three that I more or less understood the structure of true nature, of animals, grasses, birds, fish, and insects.
Consequently, by the age of eighty, I will have made even more progress; at ninety I will penetrate the mystery of things; at a hundred I will definitely have reached a degree of wonder, and when I am a hundred and ten, for my part, be it a dot, be it a line, everything will be alive.
I ask those who will live as long as I do to see if I keep my word.
Written at the age of seventy-five by myself, formerly Hokusai, today Gwakio Rogin, the old man crazy about drawing.
Stuart Horodner in The Art Life: On Creativity and Career
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 150
Tile worker, South 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.
You wait for your eye to sort of “turn on,” for the elements to fall into place and that ineffable rush to occur, a feeling of exultation when you look through that ground glass, counting ever so slowly, clenching teeth and whispering to Jessie to holdstillholdstillholdstill and just knowing that it will be good, that it is true. Like the one true sentence that Hemingway writes about in A Moveable Feast, that incubating purity and grace that happens, sometimes, when all the parts come together.
And these pictures have come quickly, in a rush… like some urgent bodily demand. They have been obvious, they have been right there to be taken, almost like celestial gifts.
Sally Mann in Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs
Comments are welcome!
