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

Inspiration Sunday

Good morning and welcome back!

I had a really amazing week last week and I look forward to sharing some of it with you.  But I will do that later on in the week.

For today...it's Inspiration Sunday and I have some quotes from artists for you that I hope you will enjoy!

It is surprising to me how many people separate the objective from the abstract.  Objective painting is not good painting unless it is good in the abstract sense. ~Georgia O'Keeffe 1887-1986

Nature contains the elements, in color and form, of all pictures, as the keyboard contains the notes of all music.  But the artist is born to pick and choose...as the musician gathers his notes, and forms his chords, until he brings forth from chaos, glorious harmony.  ~James Abbot McNeill Whistler 1834-1903

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  (referring to Rubens, Michelangelo and Raphael)

That which is ugly in art is that which is false and artificial - that which aims at being pretty or even beautiful instead of being expressive.  ~Auguste Rodin 1840-1917
 
I admire the Spanish artists like Zurbaran and Cotan because they took solid things and gave them the incredible suggestion of spirit beyond.  ~Janet Fish 1938-

Janet Fish "Goldfish and Autumn Leaves"

The conflict for realization is what makes art, not its certainty, nor its technique or material.  I do not look for total success....I will not change an error if it feels right, for the error is more human than perfection.  ~David Smith 1906-1965

I work every day.  I work all day, I've never had a holiday.  It's all I really want to do.  It's what I'm here for....More and more, I'm just so grateful I was born an artist.  ~Jim Dine 1935-

I found one had to do some work every day, even at midnight, because either you're a professional or you're not.  ~Dame Barbara Hepworth  1903-1975

To achieve poetry in a piece of sculpture, one must know how to dream, how to draw the dreams, and how to see the interwebbed, interdependent dance of this beautifully colored energy field that we too bluntly call 'life' or 'world.'  ~Mark DiSuvero 1933-

Difficulty creates the opportunity for self-reflection and compassion. If we embrace what's happening, we are also embracing what is possible - and a road opens up for God to meet us halfway. - Suzan-Lori Parks 1963-

'Till tomorrow - I wish for you a Sunday full of embracing what is possible!

~Alex