Blog Archives
Pearls from artists* # 504

* 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 a project doesn’t work out, you can always think of it as having been a worthwhile and constructive experiment. You can resist the seductions of grandiosity, blame, and shame. You can support other people in their creative efforts, acknowledge the truth that there’s plenty of room for everyone. You can measure your worth by your dedication to your path, not by your successes or failure. You can battle your demons (through therapy, recovery, prayer, or humility) instead of battling your gifts – in part by realizing that your demons were never the ones doing the work, anyhow. You can believe that you are neither a slave to inspiration nor its master, but something far more interesting – its partner – and that the two of you are working together toward something intriguing and worthwhile. You can live a long life, moving and doing really cool things the entire time. You might earn a living with your pursuits or you might not, but you can recognize that this is not really the point. And at the end of your days, you can thank creativity for having blessed you with a charmed, interesting, passionate existence.
Elizabeth Gilbert in Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear
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Pearls from artists* # 462

*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
It seems contradictory to call an artist both shy and conceited, introverted and extraverted, empathic and self-centered, highly independent and hungry for community – until we realize that all of these qualities can be dynamically present in one and the same person.
Indeed, this dynamism regularly perplexes and buffets the artist. He may begin to consider himself crazy for longing to perform even though public performance frightens him, or neurotic for feeling competent at the piano but incompetent in the world. He may come to possess the vain hope that he can live quietly, like other people, his personality statically integrated in some fashion, and then feel like a failure when the contradictory forces at play in him prevent him from feeling relaxed even for a minute. Once he realizes, however, that this puzzling contradiction is his personality, he is better able to accept himslef and to understand his motives and actions.
Eric Maisel in “A Life in the Arts: Practical Guidance and Inspiration for Creative and Performing Artists”
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Pearls from artists* # 440

*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Most artists desire recognition, and the persistent lack of it may be a bitter pill to swallow. The artist who is too-soon recognized, as Norman Mailer felt himself to be, might argue that early fame is harder on the artist than years of obscurity. But the composer with a score for a powerful symphony locked away in his drawer, and the actress who has never found a way into a great drama, are hard-pressed to agree with Mailer. Similarly, the painter who has her entire output of paintings to enjoy for herself because she cannot sell them may praise her fortitude and applaud her accomplishments, but still experiences great sadness.
If you are not honored with real, appropriate recognition, you struggle not to consider yourself a failure. You may argue that it is the world that has failed you… but it is hard to take comfort in that knowledge. You need recognition more than you need accurate understanding of why recognition has eluded you. And as you deal, during your years in the trenches, with what may turn out to be a maddingly insufficient lack of recognition, you are challenged to find ways of maintaining your faith, courage, good cheer, and emotional equilibrium.
Eric Maisel, A Life in the Arts: Practical Guidance and Inspiration for Creative and Performing Artists
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Pearls from artists* # 424
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
What the unproductive artist describes as his failure of will or insufficient motivation may rather be an absence in his belief system of the meaningfulness of art or of the art-making he’s presently doing. The most salient difference between the regularly blocked artist and the regularly productive artist may not be the greater talent of the latter, but the fact that the productive artist possesses and retains his missionary zeal.
Carlos Santana likened artists to “warriors in the trenches who have the vision of saving us from going over the edge.” The artist who possesses this vision will pursue his art even if he sometimes blocks. The artist who is less certain about the sacredness of his profession or the value of his work is hard-pressed to battle for art’s sake.
Eric Maisel in A Life in the Arts: Practical Guidance and Inspiration for Creative and Performing Artists
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Pearls from artists* # 374
* 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* # 112
* 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 the goal of art is Beauty and if we assume that the goal is sometimes reached, even if always imperfectly, how do we judge art? Basically, I think, by whether it reveals to us important Form that we ourselves have experienced but to which we have not paid adequate attention. Successful art rediscovers Beauty for us.
One standard, then, for the evaluation of art is the degree to which it gives us a fresh intimation of Form. For a picture to be beautiful it does not have to be shocking, but it must in some significant respect be unlike what has preceded it (this is why an artist cannot afford to be ignorant of the tradition within his medium). If the dead end of the romantic vision is incoherence, the failure of classicism, which is the outlook I am defending, is the cliché, the ten thousandth camera-club imitation of a picture by Ansel Adams.
Robert Adams in Beauty in Photography
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