Sunday, December 14, 2008
Poet Rainer Maria Rilke, in his "Letters to a Young Poet", wrote, "You are so young, so before all beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now."
Monday, December 08, 2008
Tao te Ching:
When people see some things as beautiful,
other things become ugly.
When people see some things as good,
other things become bad.
Being and non-being create each other.
Difficult and easy support each other.
Long and short define each other.
High and low depend on each other.
Before and after follow each other.
When people see some things as beautiful,
other things become ugly.
When people see some things as good,
other things become bad.
Being and non-being create each other.
Difficult and easy support each other.
Long and short define each other.
High and low depend on each other.
Before and after follow each other.
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
"We paint best when we lean on our nervous system." -Francis Bacon
So many of our painting problems are really problems of sight. The great writer, lecturer and professor of comparative mythology, Joseph Campbell advised, "Look, look long, and the world comes in." This applies to the making of art. The art historian Ernst Gombrich made the idea into a poem:
Seeing depends on your knowledge
And knowledge, of course, on your college,
But when you are erudite and wise
What matters is to use your eyes.
Robert Genn
So many of our painting problems are really problems of sight. The great writer, lecturer and professor of comparative mythology, Joseph Campbell advised, "Look, look long, and the world comes in." This applies to the making of art. The art historian Ernst Gombrich made the idea into a poem:
Seeing depends on your knowledge
And knowledge, of course, on your college,
But when you are erudite and wise
What matters is to use your eyes.
Robert Genn
