Blog Archives
Pearls from artists* # 316
Central Park, NYC
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Works of art are of an infinite loneliness and with nothing so little to be reached as with criticism. Only love can grasp and hold and be just toward them. Consider yourself and your feeling right every time with regard to every such argumentation, discussion, or introduction; if you are wrong after all, the natural growth of your inner life will lead you slowly and with time to other insights. Leave to your opinions their own quiet undisturbed development, which, like all progress, must come from deep within and cannot be pressed or hurried into anything. Everything is gestation and then bringing forth. To let each impression and each germ of a feeling come to completion wholly in itself, in the dark, in the inexpressible, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one’s own intelligence, and await with deep humility and patience the birth-hour of a new clarity: that alone is living the artist’s life: in understanding as in creating.
There is also no measuring with time, no year matters, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means not reckoning and counting, but ripening like the tree which does not force its sap and stands confident in the storms of spring without the fear that after them may come no summer. It does come. But it comes only to the patient, who are there as though eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly still and wide. I learn it daily, learn it with pain to which I am grateful: patience is everything!
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, Translation by M.D. Herter Norton
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Pearls from artists* # 204
Barbara’s studio with work in progress
* 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 has been said that science helps us understand what we can do; the arts and humanities – our culture and values – help us decide what to do. Studying the arts and humanities develops critical-thinking skills and nimble habits of mind, provides historical and cultural perspective and fosters the ability to analyze, synthesize and communicate.
As author Daniel Pink observed, “The last few decades have belonged to a certain kind of person with a certain kind of mind – computer programmers who could crank code, lawyers who could craft contracts, MBAs who could crunch numbers… The future belongs to a very different kind of mind – creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers and meaning makers. These people – artists, inventors, designers, storytellers, caregivers, consolers, big-picture thinkers – will now reap society’s richest rewards and share its greatest joys.”
David J. Skorton, Director of the Smithsonian Institution in “What Do We Value?” Museum, May/June 2016
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Q: Can you describe a single habit that you believe contributes to your professional success?
Barbara’s studio with work in progress
A: It’s probably the fact that I keep regular studio hours. Contrary to the cliche of artists working in spurts, I continually work in the studio at least seven hours a day, five days a week, with Wednesdays and Sundays as my days off. I devote another two hours or so in the mornings and evenings for art business tasks: email, sending out jpegs, social media, etc. I always remember something Katharine Hepburn said: “Without discipline there is no life.”
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Q: What’s on the easel today?
Work in progress
A: I am in the early stages on a large pastel painting. I’ve applied about 5 layers of pastel so far.
Comments are welcome!
Q: What’s on the easel today?
Work in progress
A: I am continuing with “White Star,” a 38″ x 58″ pastel painting I started some months ago.
Comments are welcome!
Q: What’s on the easel today?
Work in progress
A: I have just started working on a small (20″ x 26″) pastel painting. The figure is a Balinese dragon I found last summer at “Winter Sun & Summer Moon” in Rhinebeck, New York.
Preferring to collect these figures while traveling in their countries of origin, I made an exception this time. My reasoning? I have been to Bali (in 2012) and at four feet tall and carved from solid wood, this dragon is quite heavy and would have been difficult to bring home.
Comments are welcome!
Q: How many pastel paintings do you have in progress now?
Work in progress
A: Making pastel-on-sandpaper paintings is a slow and meticulous process. I work full-time in my studio so that in a good year I can produce five finished pieces. Typically two are in progress at a time so that I can switch off when problems develop.
A downside to looking at a painting for months is that there comes a point when I can’t see the flaws any more. Then it’s definitely time to take a break.
When I put a painting that has been resting back onto my easel, I see it with fresh eyes again. Areas that need work immediately stand out. Problem areas become easily resolvable because I have continued to think about them while the painting was out of my sight.
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* 178
Barbara’s studio with recent works in progress
* 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 individuals have never had enough time, and they’ve never had enough resources, and they’ve never had enough support or patronage or reward… and yet they still persist in creating. They persist because they care. They persist because they are called to be makers, by any means necessary.
…The essential ingredients for creativity remain exactly the same for everybody: courage, enchantment, permission, persistence, trust – and those elements are universally accessible. Which does not mean that creative living is always easy; it merely means that creative living is always possible.
Elizabeth Gilbert in Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear
Comments are welcome!
Q: What’s on the easel today?
Work in progress
A: I am at work on a small (20″ x 26″) pastel-on-sandpaper painting tentatively called, “Duo.” My previous painting, “Charade,” was a breakthrough of sorts; at least I hope so, because it was such an ordeal to complete!
That’s why I am giving myself a break and making a relatively simple piece now. It’s a way of resting and also of re-filling the well.
Recently something happened that broke my heart: I had to put my beloved cat to sleep. When I look at this image I am reminded of Kit Kat, who was always by my side. He and I were another “Duo” alluded to in the title of this painting.
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 173
Collector, “False Friends,” and ARTNews article that shows the painting in progress
* 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, by nature, are gamblers. Gambling is a dangerous habit. But whenever you make art, you’re always gambling. You’re rolling the dice on the slim odds that your investment of time, energy, and resources now might pay off later in a big way – that somebody might buy your work, and that you might become successful.
Elizabeth Gilbert in Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear
Comments are welcome!
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