Blog Archives
Pearls from artists* # 254
“Survivors,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 20″ x 26″ image, 28 1/2″ x 35″ framed
* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
An artist learns by repeated trial and error, by an almost moral instinct, to avoid the merely or the confusingly decorative, to eschew violence where it is a fraudulent substitute for power, to say what he has to say with the most direct and economical means, to be true to his objects, to his materials, to his technique, and hence, by a correlated miracle, to himself.
Ian Roberts in Creative Authenticity: 16 Principles to Clarify and Deepen Your Artistic Vision
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Start/Finish of “The Ancestors,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 58″ x 38″ image, 70″ x 50″ framed
Beginning
Finished
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Q: What’s on the easel today?
Work in progress
A: I am putting a few finishing touches on “Conundrum,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 38″ x 58″.
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Pearls from artists* # 242
“Figment,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 20″ x 26″
* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Of this there can be no question – creative work requires the loyalty of water to the force of gravity. A person trudging through the wilderness of creation who does not know this – who does not swallow this – is lost. He who does not crave that roofless place eternity should stay home. Such a person is perfectly worthy, and useful, and even beautiful, but is not an artist. Such a person had better live with timely ambitions and finished work formed for the sparkle of the moment only. Such a person had better go off and fly an airplane.
Mary Oliver in Upstream: Selected Essays
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Pearls from artists* # 236
“Some Things We Regret,” 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.
There are so many things that art can’t do. It can’t bring the dead back to life, it can’t mend arguments between friends, or cure AIDS, or halt the pace of climate change. All the same, it does have some extraordinary functions, some odd negotiating ability between people, including people who never meet and yet who infiltrate and enrich each other’s lives, it does have a capacity to create intimacy; it does have a way of healing wounds, and better yet of making it apparent that not all wounds need healng and not all scars are ugly.
Olivia Laing in The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone
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Pearls from artists* # 235
“Effigy,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 26″ x 20″
* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
People make things – make art or things that are akin to art – as a way of expressing their need for contact, or their fear of it; people make objects as a way of coming to terms with shame, with grief. People make objects to strip themselves down, to survey their scars, and people make objects to resist oppression, to create a space in which they can move freely. Art doesn’t have to have a reparative function, any more than it has a duty to be beautiful or moral.
Olivia Laing in The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone
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Pearls from artists* # 229
“Epiphany,” 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.
After his own cancer diagnosis, [Donald] Hall writes: “If work is no antidote to death, nor a denial of it, death is a powerful stimulus to work. Get done what you can.” There is this – only this. It would be good to keep these words in mind when we wake up each morning. Get done what you can. And then the rest is gravy.
Dani Shapiro in Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life
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Start/Finish of “Charade”
Charcoal underdrawing
“Charade,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 38″ x 58″
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barbararachkoscoloreddust.com 