Alex Alvis Art

Inspiration Sunday

Hope you are having a very artful Sunday...no not awful...ARTful.  :)

It's Inspiration Sunday - and your quotes from the Artist to Artist book are from the sections on Seeing and Perception and Solitude:

A painter should be a solitary.  Solitude is essential to his art.  Alone you belong to yourself only; with even on other person you are only half yourself, and you will be less and less yourself in proportion to the number of companions. ~ Leonardo da Vinci 1452-1519

Leonardo da Vinci - Lady With An Ermine

The artist does not draw what he sees, but what he must make others see.  ~Edgar Degas 1834-1917

Edgar Degas - Dancers in Pink

I grant you that the artist does not see Nature as she appears to the vulgar, because his emotions reveal to him the hidden truths beneath appearances . . . his eye grafted on his heart reads deeply into the bosom of Nature.  That is why the artist has only to trust his eyes.  ~Auguste Rodin 1840-1917

Auguste Rodin - The Three Shades

Try to reduce everything you wee to the utmost simplicity.  That is, let nothing but the things which are of the utmost importance to you have any place . . . there are lots of clever people who can paint 'anything,' but lacking the seeing power, paint nothing worth while . . . . Seeing is not such an easy thing as it is supposed to be.  ~Robert Henri 1865-1929

Robert Henri - Spanish Landscape (1902)

I work alone (I haven't ever found a way of working other than in considerable privacy), and I go to quite considerable lengths to insure that. . . . I don't find it possible to lose myself in the activity if there are other people around.  ~Reg Butler 1913-1981

Reg Butler - Manipulator

Art, to me, is seeing.  I think you have got to use your eyes as well as your emotions, and one without the other just doesn't work.  ~Andrew Wyeth 1917-2009

Andrew Wyeth - Winter 1946

I realized also that the artist is always alone.  Early in life I had thought I needed other people to confirm or approve what I was doing. . . .  It was important for me to learn that what I wanted was really no different from what other artists wanted:  confidence that I could be my own censor, my own audience, my own competition.  ~Beverly Pepper 1924-

Beverly Pepper-Parc de l'Estació del Nord, Barcelona

Sometimes I see it and then paint it.  Other times I paint it and then see it.  ~Jasper Johns 1930-

Jasper Johns - Zero Through Nine (1961)

Actually you see things differently all the time depending on the light, the nature of the day, the way your eyes are focused, the mood you are in.  Your focus keeps changing. f Your head is always moving.  All these things are happening and it is all changing your perception.  ~Janet Fish 1938-

Janet Fish - Black Bowl Red Scarf (2007)

You see, it takes me forever to do a painting, and for that you need peace and quiet. . . .  ~Catherine Murphy 1946-

Catherine Murphy - Persimmon (1991)

Tomorrow we will go back to talking about the women artists featured in the film !Women Art Revolution.

'Til tomorrow!

~Alex