You Reading This, Be Ready by William Stafford Starting here, what do you want to remember? How sunlight creeps along a shining floor? What scent of old wood hovers, what softened sound from outside fills the air? Will you ever bring a better gift for the world than the breathing respect that you carry…
on making bad art
If you have ever read a better book on making art than Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking by David Bayles and Ted Orland … I would love to know! Art & Fear is my absolute favorite in the genre of creativity, I read it all the time, and it…
two weeks, two countries
– new instalments in my perpetual nature journals. Week 18: oak and narcissus in my Norwegian journal. … Week 19: a twig of passionflower for my Spanish sketchbook. …
Don’t worry about self-expression
The material should be filtered through you rather than your filtering yourself through the material. Self-expression is a natural by-product of your work, because you are doing it. If the purpose of the project is to express yourself, there is a danger there will be no surprises. — Corita Kent Corita Kent: for the oak…
Simply this:
To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work. — Mary Oliver «White Pine: Poems and Prose Poems» (snapshot from a recent trip to Ravello, Italy)
A few of my favorite things…
Do we really need art … when nature can give us so much beauty?
cloud~watching
All day I tried to paint the sky, clouds passing by. Every attempt a mistake stilted, awkward – – unreal Then I went out and looked up: And as for the first time I noticed; the sky really doesn’t look real at all –
The Artichoke
Artichoke: That vegetable of which one has more at the finish than at the start of dinner. ~Lord Chesterfield Artichokes are young, unopened thistle buds from the daisy family. If left to mature, the flowers can reach up to 5 feet in height. They are descendants of a similar thistle plant known as the cardoon,…
Have no fear!
Have no fear of perfection – you’ll never reach it. ― Salvador Dalí In a recent post, the Australian urban sketcher Liz Steel, presents her motivation for keeping a daily sketchbook in a very simple and elegant way, she says: My main reason for sketching regularly is to keep a visual journal of my life (…
