Sunday, November 16, 2014

Inspiration Sunday

With only one post between last week's Inspiration Sunday post and this week's you may be wondering what the heck?  It's like this.  We live on a ranch and on that ranch are cows and they will, on occasion, have a cow.  In this case there came along a little black calf on the coldest day in the history of where we live in 101 years.

A busy life made busier making sure a new life didn't turn into a popsicle.  But today?  Glorious!  The sky is once again that special Colorado blue.  You don't see that color anywhere else.  Of course it's still only 7 degrees outside. . . but it's going to get better every day.

Hope these quotes are so inspiring that we get a whole lot of creative juice flowing this week!  Enjoy :)  Since I've been researching a lot of artists who's work is more abstract - most of today's quotes reflect that.

What experience has shown me is that it takes your life to become an artist. ~Eric Fischl
©Eric Fischl - Booth #1 Oldenburg’s Sneakers
'Realism' has been abandoned in the search for reality:  the 'principal objective' of abstract art is precisely this reality.  ~Ben Nicholson
©Ben Nicholson - Elephantine

What does that represent?  There was never any question in plastic art, in poetry, in music, of representing anything.  It is a matter of making something beautiful, moving, or dramatic - this is by no means the same thing.  ~Fernand Leger
©Fernand Lager - A Vision of the Contemporary City

In the arts there are many right answers.  I've learned over the years that when you get a clue to another possibility to follow it through . . . . Ultimately, my hope is to amaze myself.  ~Jerry Uelsmann
©Jerry Uelsmann - Untitled 1987

The trouble with recognizable art is that it excludes too much.  I want my work to include more.  And 'more' also comprises one's doubts about the object, plus the problem, the dilemma of recognizing it.  ~Philip Guston
©Philip Guston - Head and Bottle

So now the floodgates are open to the delight of pure form, whatever its origin.  Anything goes.  ~Philip Johnson
Philip Johnson's Glass House

Abstract expressionism was the first American art that was filled with anger as well as beauty.  ~Robert Motherwell
© Robert Motherwell - Black on White

If you make pictures you are bound to be an abstract painter on some level.  ~George D. Green
©George D. Green - Bones

Be guided by feelings alone. . . . Before any site and any objects, abandon yourself to your first impression.  If you have really been touched, you will convey to others the sincerity of your emotion.  ~Jean-Baptist-Camille Corot
©Jean-Babtist_Camille Carot - Pâturage dans les marais

When you see a fish you don't think of its scales, do you?  You think of its speed, its floating, flashing body seen through the water.  Well, I've tried to express just that.  If I made fins and eyes and scales, I would arrest it movement, give a pattern or shape of reality.  I want just the flash of its spirit.  ~Constantin Brancusi
©Constantin Brancusi - The Kiss
Wishing you a wonderful (and warm) week this week.  I'll be back as soon as I can with another artist from the WACK show.

'Til then!

~Alex