Artists hate the word beauty, especially German artists. If you wanted to be really hated in Germany, then you would say, “My work is beautiful.” German artists believe in ugliness and nastiness. I think beauty can be something extremely important in our lives. And it’s not true that this is naive. This is what is…
“I never really separated painting and literature.”
Claire Daigle writes: In 1959 Twombly executed some of the most spare works of his career, among them the 24 drawings that comprise Poems to the Sea, done on the coast of Italy. What order of poems, punctuated with numerals and question marks, are these? The sea is reduced to horizon line and word, scribblings and…
Trespassing time and place
Cy Twombly (American, 1928-2011) is a great painter, but sometimes it seems even more accurate to describe him as a great writer. He writes of many things: his love of other great painting and writing (and sculpture and architecture), his love of nature and history and of the places where all these things intersect most…
Hommage à Wisława Szymborska
«I prefer the absurdity of sketching – to the absurdity of not sketching» Gouache + watercolor + colourpencils + fineliner in my everyday sketchbook
I DON’T LIKE HEARING that poetry is dying or dead –
I prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems… Possibilities I prefer movies. I prefer cats. I prefer the oaks along the Warta. I prefer Dickens to Dostoyevsky. I prefer myself liking people to myself loving mankind. I prefer keeping a needle and thread on hand, just in case. I…
I like a quiet life –
Lunch dates take the heart out of the day and the spaciousness from the morning’s work Journal of a Solitude May Sarton May Sarton May Sarton (1912-1995) was a prolific American writer of poetry, novels and journals. She is, perhaps, best known for her nonfiction on growing older (Recovering: A Journal and Journal of a…
To require perfection is to invite paralysis
“What I want to paint are the things that have been seen so often that people no lenger notice them …” —Eliot Hodgkin morning walk in the woods “Insight comes, more often than not, from looking at what’s been on the table all along, in front of everybody, rather than from discovering something new.”…
Sunday poem on a Saturday
Lighthouse Keeping – Seas pleat winds keen fogs deepen ships lean no doubt, and the lighthouse keeper keeps a light for those left out. It is intimate and remote both for the keeper and those afloat. Kay Ryan (from my sketchbook)
James Hollis & the second half of life
Did I mention that I have been reading the Jungian analyst James Hollis this summer? Hollis has written several books on what he calls the second half of life. I am not in any way ready for making a meaningful, abridged, account of his perspective on life. But I might give you a glimpse into his way of…
Still here
— sketching my way into autumn, having great fun mixing gouache & watercolours on my sketchbook pages
