Blog Archives

Pearls from artists* # 695

Barbara’s paintings on exhibit in Mumbai, 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.

Artists are known to feel intense highs and lows. Being a channel for such copious amounts of emotion is overwhelming. The input we absorb and the output we emit can feel as though it might annihilate us, as if our hearts might explode with joy, or be crushed with sorrow. We were all handed a special gift at birth, a fire to be tended. It flares and wanes over the course of our existence. We spend our livings trying to keep it burning and fed, without allowing it to consume us.

Kate Kretz in Art From Your Core: A Holistic Guide to Visual Voice

Comments are welcome!

Pearls from artists* # 636

With “Wise One” (left) and “The Moralist”
With “Wise One” (left) and “The Moralist”

*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.

Some artists will rework a piece for half a lifetime before they know it is finished. An improviser may have to practice for years before being able to play a totally spontaneous minute of music in which every detail is right for its own fleeting moment. The great scientists and scholars are not those who publish or perish at any cost, but rather those who are willing to wait until the pieces of the puzzle come together in nature’s own design. The fruits of improvising, composing, writing, inventing, and discovering may flower spontaneously, but they arise from soil that we have prepared, fertilized, and tended in the faith that they will ripen in nature’s own time.

Stephen Nachmanovitch in Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art

Comments are welcome!