Blog Archives
Pearls from artists* # 82
“The Sovereign,” soft 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 isn’t psychology. For one thing art deals in images, not language. Images precede language and are closer to feelings. They summon feelings before they’re named and categorized, when they’re still fresh and sometimes hard to recognize or identify.
For another thing, to translate his vision an artist uses materials that are, for lack of a better word, alchemical. Paint, for example, has this wonderful, mysterious quality – a smell and a sensuous, velvety feel and an ability to hold color and light – that unlocks and speeds up one’s creative metabolism. And paint captures my every impulse – from my broadest conceptions to the tiniest ticks and tremors of my wrist.
There are literally no words to describe what occurs when an image suddenly and unexpectedly appears on the canvas. Sometimes it’s serendipity, the result of a fortunate brushstroke. Sometimes I think it has to do with the inherent qualities of paint, or the slickness of a surface, or the fullness or acuity of a brush. And sometimes when I’ve got a good rhythm going and everything comes together, I feel as though it produces the purest expression of who I am and what I am and how I perceive the world.
Eric Fischl and Michael Stone in Bad Boy: My Life on and off the Canvas
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Pearls from artists* # 81
“Poker Face,” 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.
The creative process remains as baffling and unpredictable to me today as it did when I began my journey over forty years ago. On the one hand, it seems entirely logical – insight building on insight; figures from my past, the culture, and everyday life sparking scenes and images on canvas; and all of it – subject, narrative, theme – working together with gesture, form, light to capture deeply felt experience. But in real time the process is a blur, a state that precludes consciousness or any kind of rational thinking. When I’m working well, I’m lost in the moment, painting quickly and intuitively, reacting to forms on the canvas, allowing their meaning to reveal itself to me. In every painting I make I’m looking for some kind of revelation, something I didn’t see before. If it surprises me, hopefully it will surprise the viewer, too.
Eric Fischl and Michael Stone in Bad Boy: My Life On and Off the Canvas
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 31
A corner of 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.
When we are children we unquestioningly see the objects around us as alive; we speak to them, give them names, breathe life into them. The imagination knows no bounds. As we grow up, we gradually lose this facility, until we finally arrive in an utterly “demystified” world that draws clear boundaries between what is alive and what is not, between subjective and objective perception. According to Sigmund Freud, culture is the only domain in our modern society that gives a measure of legitimacy to the persistence of this infantile desire to see things as animate. In the field of art, imagination is the precondition on which fiction of any sort rests; in art, mental states can be projected onto objects and images, but not in social reality or the sciences.
Dietrich Karner in Animism: Modernity Through the Looking Glass
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Pearls from artists* # 24
Untitled, chromogenic print, 24″ x 24,” edition of 5
* 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 person is not an artist until he works at his art, no matter how eloquently he speaks during the cocktail hour or how fine are the images that come to his mind. As David Salle, the visual artist, put it, “It’s easy to be an artist in your head.” We, as artists, know this. We realize that often we are not able to translate our vision into splendid art. Even the finest artists write books that are not great, paint pictures that are not great, compose pieces that are not great, involve themselves in projects that are not great. But artists can only try – and must try.
When you love what you are doing, know what you are doing, and do it, a confidence is bred in you that is the best stretcher of limits. Then you can say, as the visual artist June Wayne said, “Now when I start something, I expect to carry it off.”
Eric Maisel, A Life in the Arts
Comments are welcome!
Q: Do you listen to music while you work?
A corner of the studio
A: I always have the stereo on when I work in my studio, either tuned in to WBGO (the Newark-based jazz station), WNYC (for news and talk radio; Leonard Lopate, Fresh Air, etc.), WFMU (Fordham University’s radio station, to learn what college kids are listening to) and other local radio stations. I still listen to cd’s, I read the lyrics and the liner notes, and I prefer to listen to music the way artists intended it, meaning that I listen to entire albums from start to finish instead of jumping around between single tracks by different artists. When it comes to music, I’m interested in everything: jazz (especially classic jazz artists like Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Art Blakely, etc.), blues, classical, pop, rock, world music (especially artists from Brazil, Cuba, and any country in Africa), electronic, indy, experimental, ancient music, etc. You name it, I probably listen to it, and if I don’t, I’m eager to learn all about it. When I’m working, certain artists are better to listen to at particular points in a painting. For example, one of my favorite artists to start a new painting with is Lady Gaga. The beat, her energy, and sheer exuberance are perfect when I’m standing in front of my easel with a blank piece of sandpaper in front of me. Gaga’s music gets me moving and working fast, putting down colors instinctively without thinking about them, just feeling everything.
It’s a different story when I am at my apartment and am shooting a photo setup. Then I might or might not listen to music. Lately it’s more about working fast (I shoot 24 images in about 15 minutes), choosing a variety of interesting vantage points, getting surprising effects, etc.
Comments are welcome!
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