Spaces

What art offers is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit.
(John Updike)

Space is the breath of art.

Frank Lloyd Wright

Trust

I am not sure why I picked this photo. Perhaps it is because even though it snowed last night I trust spring is just around the corner. Or maybe that before this flower grew in my garden I trusted that one seed planted in the soil with water and sun would yield something so awesome.

The highest art... sets down its creations and trusts in their magic, without fear of not being understood. (Hermann Hesse)




Trust your intuition, your inner knowing; allow yourself to be immersed in the process of creation as a joyous and sacred dance of materials; neither listen to critics nor be one; leap into the dark secure in the knowing that wherever your feet touch down will be the right place at the right time. (Burnell Yow!)

Journey

That's the best thing about walking, the journey itself. It doesn't matter much whether you get where you're going or not. You'll get there anyway. Every good hike brings you eventually back home. (Edward Abbey)

Helen Frankenthaler

Helen Frankenthaler was born in New York City on December 28, 1928, the third and youngest daughter of a noted justice of the New York Supreme Court and his German born wife.  She attended the exclusive Brearley School in Manhattan and the Dalton School where her art teacher was Rufino Tamayo.  He suggested that she go to Bennington College to study painting;

Every canvas is a journey all its own. (Helen Frankenthaler)

Choices

Every picture one paints involves not painting others. (Robert Motherwell)

Always go with the choice that scares you the most, because that's the one that is going to require the most from you. (Caroline Myss)

Strength

Liberty Leading the People

Delacroix depicted Liberty, as both an allegorical goddess-figure and a robust woman of the people, an approach that contemporary critics denounced as "ignoble". The mound of corpses acts as a kind of pedestal from which Liberty strides, barefoot and bare-breasted, out of the canvas and into the space of the viewer. (wikipedia)

encouragement

The essential support and encouragement comes from within, arising out of the mad notion that your society needs to know what only you can tell it. (John Updike)

influences

One never knows what one is going to do. One starts a painting and then it becomes something quite else. It is remarkable how little the 'willing' of the artist intervenes. (Pablo Picasso)

Picasso

Three great points:

There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterwards you can remove all traces of reality. There's no danger then, anyway, because the idea of the object will have left an indelible mark. (Pablo Picasso)

People want Art. And they are given it. But the less Art there is in painting the more painting there is. (Pablo Picasso)


Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility. (Pablo Picasso)

Regrowth

Julie Benda

Beginnings

We can maintain the freshness of beginning, of being brought to a sense of awe in every moment by dropping expectation. (Linda Saccoccio)



Beauty does not exist to be ignored, rather it is a reflection of the soul that invites our participation. (Linda Saccoccio)







I found these two quotes from the website the the Painters Keys. I was unfamiliar with Linda, but these quote moved me, after a little reseach on Google here is her website,
http://www.lindasaccoccio.com/

Dreams

I have always been amazed at the way an ordinary observer lends so much more credence and attaches so much more importance to waking events than to those occurring in dreams... Man... is above all the plaything of his memory. (Andre Breton)

Seek art and abstraction in nature by dreaming in the presence of it... (Paul Gauguin)

Marc Chagall

Marc Chagall

Color is all. When color is right, form is right. Color is everything, color is vibration like music; everything is vibration. (Marc Chagall)

Art seems to me to be a state of soul more than anything else. (Marc Chagall)

DOUBT

I felt so insufficiently equipped, so unprepared, so weak, and at the same time it seemed to me that my reflections on art were correct. I quarreled with all the world and with myself. (Edgar Degas)

That painter who has no doubts will achieve little. (Leonardo da Vinci)

Other thoughts:

Creativity requires introspection, self-examination, and a willingness to take risks. Because of this, artists are perhaps more susceptible to self-doubt and despair than those who do not court the creative muses. (Eric Maisel)



Do I doubt the painting I've just painted because it is not right or because I can never like what I do? (Eric Maisel)


I was wondering who Dr Maisel was here is a short bio about him:

Eric Maisel, Ph.D., is the author of more than thirty books. He holds Bachelor’s degrees in Philosophy and Psychology, Master's degrees in Creative Writing and Counseling, and a Doctorate in Counseling Psychology. He is a California licensed marriage and family therapist, a creativity coach and trainer of creativity coaches, a columnist for Art Calendar Magazine, provides regular segments for Art of the Song Creativity Radio, and teaches Ten Zen Second techniques through lectures, workshops, and teleseminars. He lives in San Francisco.

Thoughts

I try to apply colors like words that shape poems, like notes that shape music. (Joan Miro)

Abstraction allows man to see with his mind what he cannot physically see with his eyes... Abstract art enables the artist to perceive beyond the tangible, to extract the infinite out of the finite. It is the emancipation of the mind. It is an explosion into unknown areas. (Arshile Gorky)

Arshile Gorky

Nature

Nature is my springboard. From her I get my initial impetus. I have tried to relate the visible drama of mountains, trees, and bleached fields with the fantasy of wind blowing and changing colors and forms. (Milton Avery)

Milton Avery

Style

Frank Auerbach

The unity in any painter's work arises from the fact that a person, brought to a desperate situation, will behave in a certain way... style. (Frank Auerbach)


What is style... is it the way an artist executes a painting, the amount of color, line ....the quickness or deliberate marks...It is personal, authentic and not an imitation...
One definition I found on the Internet:
Style is:
a mode of expressing thought in language (a manner of expression characteristic of an individual, period, school, or nation)


a manner or tone assumed in discourse, or


the custom or plan followed in spelling, capitalization, punctuation, and typographic arrangement and display.


“I discovered that what's really important for a creator isn't what we vaguely define as inspiration or even what it is we want to say, recall, regret, or rebel against. No, what's important is the way we say it. Art is all about craftsmanship. Others can interpret craftsmanship as style if they wish. Style is what unites memory or recollection, ideology, sentiment, nostalgia, presentiment, to the way we express all that. It's not what we say but how we say it that matters.”

Federico Fellini





Style is everything. (Susan Sontag)

These are a few of my favorite things...art related

MOMA

Mark Rothko

circles

Joan Mitchell

Robin egg blue

                                                                 Lake Superior

the 100 day project

Moleskine notebooks

Spring a time for new beginnings

cbenda

The important thing is somehow to begin. (Henry Moore)

I am recommending a great book: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield.
This book is a fast read. I read it in a day. It was entertaining and very thought provoking. Pressfield is a writer who challenges the reader to look closely at what gets in the way of doing your creative work.