Inspiration Sunday

Our house is finally getting back to what we would call "normal".  Although we have one more trip to make - an exciting one to our gallery in Jackson Hole, Wyoming - the beautiful Turpin Gallery. 

To those of you who are heading that way - they have an all NEW location at 25 Cache Street they are NOT on Center Street anymore.

Today I have taken quotes for inspiration for us from the Artist to Artist book compiled by Clint Brown from the section Artists on Artists:

Glory to that Homer of painting, to that father of warmth and enthusiasm....he really paints men. ~Eugene Delacroix 1796-1863 (on Rubens)

To my eye Rubens' colouring is most contemptible.  His shadows are a filthy brown somewhat the color of excrement.  These are filled with tints and masses of yellow and red.  His lights are all the colours of the rainbow, laid on indiscriminately and broken one into another.  ~William Blake 1757-1827

The grand and heroic draftsmen, then, had better be the models, though one's aim be far from heroic and grand.  With their august help one learns to lay one's traps and spread one's nets, to snare the subject matter of one's own intuition and life experience, however special and small. ~Isabel Bishop 1902-1988

Isabel Bishop - detail of one of her paintings (don't know which one)

One can claim without fear of contradiction that artists as outstandingly gifted as Raphael are not simply men but, if it be allowed to say so, mortal gods, and that those who leave on earth an honored name in the annals of fame may also hope to enjoy in heaven a just reward for their work and talent. ~Giorgio Vasari 1511-1574

Ingres did not belong to his age...His works are not true art; for the value of art lies in its power to increase our moral force or establish its heightening influence.  ~Odilon Redon 1840-1916

I met Elizabeth Murray....She worked constantly, wouldn't go to meals, lived on Grape Nuts.  She was a real artist to me. ~Jennifer Bartlett 1941- 

His is the greatest palette of France and no one beneath our skies possessed to a greater extent than he both the serene and the pathetic, the vibration of color.  We all paint through him. ~Paul Cezanne 1839-1906 (on Delacroix).

Manet did not do the expected.  He was a pioneer.  He followed his individual whim.  Told the public what he wanted it to know, not the time worn things the public already knew and thought it wanted to hear again.  The public was very much offended. ~Robert Henri 1865-1929

Diego and Frida had open house.  In that house you'd see a king and you'd see a laborer.  He never had a distinction - never.  There was nothing he wouldn't give you. ~Louise Nevelson 1900-1988 (on Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo) 

Now, Bonnard at times seems styleless.  Someone said of him that he had the rare ability to forget from one day to another what he had done.  He added the next day's experience to it, like a child following a balloon. ~Franz Kline 1910-1962

The painters I like?  To mention only contemporaries:  Delacroix, Corot, Millet, Rousseau, Courbet are masters.  And finally all those who loved and had a strong feeling for nature. ~Alfred Sisley 1839-1899

He is the painter of painters. ~Edouard Manet 1832-1883 (on Velazquez)

No words can describe the immense tenderness of Diego for the things which had beauty....He tries to do and have done what he considers just in life:  to work and create. ~Frida Kahlo 1920-1954 (on her husband, Diego Rivera)

That's our Inspiration Sunday for this Sunday.  I hope your Sunday is filled with inspiration!

'Til tomorrow!

~Alex