Landscape painting tends to fall under more academic controls. I must say I often like working within these controls. It gives me the feeling that I'm taking part in a noble tradition.
Well considered abandonment is a trusted teacher.
Artists should be aware that petty stroking could be the source of arrested productivity. An artist's job includes the avoidance of premature closure by the begged or gratuitous approval of others.
Prices need to be fair appropriate and consistent.
Artists... do not need the applause or condemnation of the critics the ideas of other artists or the demands of the collectors.
The guy may be totally motivated connected and inspired but if he doesn't know how to do it he's not the guy to take out your appendix.
Style essentially appeared out of what I liked to do.
In art everyone who plays wins.
Artspeak is an arcane writing style that can result in a vocabulary of obscurities... Today some of the more spectacular examples are in artist's statements.
Now familiar with my own particular voice and accent my Dragon app prints out exactly what I speak into my iPad. Twenty years ago this miracle would be unthinkable.
Dogs are angels sent from heaven in order to help us to be better people.
Perhaps we might within the anatomy of our imaginations think once more of the naked body as a vessel of grace taste and wonder. In the spotted history of art stranger things have happened.
While obsessive behavior may be an antisocial plague to societies and communities at large it's total moxie when lone practitioners catch it.
An abstract title suggests another value to the subject perhaps an artistic quality that sets the viewers' sensitivities into action.
Great paintings have gradations large and small... They serve to lift the subject off the two-dimensionality of the canvas. Gradations are an essential abstract convention.
Music is the most abstract of the arts and it expresses the sound of the universe itself. These are the real rhythms that stimulate the artist's mind and guide his hand.
Abstraction generally involves implication suggestion and mystery rather than obvious description.
Sometimes you can be lucky enough to establish a working relationship with another artist who takes away the loneliness particularly in travel and outdoor work.
Many of us knuckle-dragging brush-painters think that 'behind the times' is part of our job description. Why deny ourselves the authentic journey of a time-honoured form?
I always thought signing was an artist's honour and guarantee of authenticity.
The artist needs to sit patiently at the feet of Nature in all Her moods and nuances and silently develop the skills to honour Her. There are no recipes for Autumn.
Learning to focus and pay attention if only for a short time has been identified as a primary key to the development of human effectiveness.
Properly channeled common feelings of inadequacy lead to powers of accomplishment.
According to Mednick after sleep people are 33 percent more likely to be creative.
A drawing a day keeps the cobwebs away.
It is necessary to put yourself out for rejection and accept that you will be rejected.
Starving artist' is acceptable at age 20 suspect at age 40 and problematical at age 60.
A simple equation for the production of successful art work is lots of reference material plus lots of art supplies equals lots of painting happiness.
Risk in art is experimentation. There is no sorrow in self-driven experimentation.
Critics are the products of their own times and biases and what they have to say about works of art is as transient and insubstantial as fashion.
Art because it's so easy to do and yet so difficult to do well encourages humility in the human soul.
Art is a Great Goddess of infinite intrigue and illusion and even a lifetime of worship may not find her fickle soul.
Art is a path on which we honour our world.
We artists stick ourselves out. This in itself deserves respect.
True muses stay dreams forever unless artists connect them to exploratory work.
For all of us self-briefing before going out or starting a project sharpens artistic wit.
The thing about art is that life is in no danger of being meaningless
Art is a form of love. Art is the ultimate gift. Art heals life.
A painting has an intrinsic value which has nothing to do with critical assessments.
Accepting the gift may take the accumulated wisdom of some trodden miles but it also opens the welcome windows of joy.
Artists with serious aspirations need to be left alone to follow the course of their own imagination.
Certain music is terrifically inspirational and it is possible months or even years afterwards to look at a painting and remember the music that was playing during its execution.
Start with the foreground. Compositions fail when the foreground is treated as an afterthought.
More than any other colour red is loaded for action.
We are not born focusing. It's an acquired skill that requires initial effort and constant upgrading.
A method of achieving wild enthusiasm is to act wildly enthusiastic. Often a growing and beautiful love-affair develops quite automatically.
The head governs the heart assists the body acts.
Our currency is what we are able to make.
Sentimental titles are the last bastion of scoundrels and can add significant barf to an already barfy work.
One compositional element suggests and asks for another. This is what makes the activity interesting.
We have been mysteriously gifted this amazing life. Let us not complain.
Quality is always in style.
In life and art it's better to be an enthusiastic amateur than a jaded professional.
With repetition the alternate approaches become clear options open.
Take your brush here and there like a bee in an alpine meadow. In other words don't laboriously work on or try to finish off one particular part. Paint promiscuously.
Your muse is amused and willed to further renewal during the process of mindless grabbing of reference material or errant imaginings.
Art thrives on a difference of opinion. My treasure is your junk sort of thing. Life would be dull if we all agreed.
We artists allow others to see through our windows.
Mountains in all their moods are symbols of something greater something worth aspiring to. Mountains are powerful dangerous beautiful noble and mysterious. Mountains get respect.
A young person wanting to become an artist might simply go purposefully and dedicatedly to his or her room with a few books and a thousand blank canvases for four years.
So who are we going to blame for our disappointments and our failures?
In acrylic happiness comes a bit faster.
Previously unseen boo-boos come at you like tattoos on a teenage girl.
By thinking you are cleverer and more talented than your buddies many a career has been blotted.
Don't assume there is only one way. Don't assume that mistakes are a bad thing. Don't think for one minute that everyone agrees with what 'good' is.
An early flourish of confidence is useful. Then there's the small crudities - the slubs and bumps that come with outdoor work - the odd charm of imprecision.
Regarding ego force we don't always like people who have it. If you have it and need to be liked you ought to consider letting most of it come out the end of your brush.
You're right super-realism is back in style.
With cropping a new integrity appears and winning abstractions flutter up like butterflies. You can afford to be critical discriminating innocent open-minded charmed beguiled or bamboozled.
Keep busy while you are waiting for something to happen.
Drawing is still the bottom line.
Fact is perfection is boring.
The brilliance of art as a collectible is that it has a way of reaching out on an emotional level. It touches on mystery even spirituality.
Objects are held by the backgrounds that are cut into them.
I do know for most of us the very best of times are when you're in your own space sweating trying to squeeze quality out of imperfect capabilities.
Curiosity allows your unique "owned processes" to draw you toward creative conclusions.
Pushing yourself to extremes blows out the cobwebs of trusted habit. It shakes up what you know to be reliably safe and substitutes the miracle of insecurity.
As every artist who has used the method knows - photography's a loyal slave and a tyrannical master.
I'm a believer in moderation in all things including moderation.
The only bad studio is the unused one.
Life is a passage through a museum of beauty.
To float like a cloud you have to go to the trouble of becoming one.
Know that to begin is often better than to think.
Sometimes... we suffer from the tyranny of comparison. Contests competitions thrive on it. Who cares?
The centipede has rhythm and flow in its hundred legs precisely because it does not have to think about it. Consider this the next time you move the instruments of your art.
As self-governing entities artists have a profound interest in change. Embracing change we embrace growth and we embrace our future.
No one is going to hand you an organizational chart. You have to hand it to yourself.
This evening while signing my name on a painting I was thinking I might stop signing my cheques.
The Canadian painter A. Y. Jackson noted that 'failure of sight' was a tiresome problem. He meant we should be able to look at our work-in-progress as if it were previously unseen.
In the companionship of art we are all of a time. Early or late we are to be shared.
I've come to realize that companionship and mild competition can help build quality and lay the ground for excellence.
Priests are often well-meaning people who haven't yet looked too thoroughly into comparative religion.
My app is the same juicy paint used by Vincent Van Gogh; my screen is the woven canvas of Titian. Painting by hand I've come to figure is a certain kind of love.
We artists give daily thanks for the miracle of our planet and for the inclination and the capability to honour it.
Creativity is dynamic it asserts life frees the human spirit conquers mental lassitude and illness and makes real the outrageous potential of the universal imagination.
Incompetence in my books is the failure of the critical faculties to interfere constructively with the natural flow.
Most of my contemporary grant-getters are now doing something other than painting.
Painters paint and history continues to make fools of curators.
Contrary to popular belief all evolving artists are in a full time battle with mediocrity.
In acrylics what you lose on the straights you make up for on the corners.
In painting you cover up your sins and everyone thinks you're naturally talented.
It's my wish that I can help creative people think of new ways to be creative - to get more joy and understanding from their own unique processes.
Evolved creators are just as curious about their failures as they are of their successes.
While Mojo suggests any art that invokes supernatural powers for us creators Mojovation means finding magic in what we do.
Passion is the force that springs an artist from the needling cushion of depression.
Do not be frivolous with the gift of a day. Right now it's all you have. Yesterday is history.
Inspiration comes from doing.
As you do your work you discover what you love to do.
No matter what your disciplines you need your own personal lists.
While this may seem peculiar the combo of work and distraction leads to levels of innovation not often generated by structured focused thinking alone.
Dealer goodwill and friendship are keys to thrival.
For a lot of us drawing is a tyranny which impedes freshness and spontaneity.
When you sit down to paint or draw you form yourself into a posture of praise
The problem with University degrees particularly the more spectacular ones is that people who possess them can fall into the trap of thinking people who don't have them don't know anything.
Artists are supposed to be the ones with imagination. A good part of our job description is to get regular people to use theirs.
By stealthily teaching dependence photography can turn out to be dangerous.
Many a fine style has evolved from a decent handicap.
I required a destination that was worthy of many visits.
An opening and a receptiveness to design and pattern for its own sake seems to free the painting hand.
It's better to have a small diamond than a large piece of glass.
We are trying to evoke and reinforce meanings from the spaces we cover and the times we're given. Short or long this becomes our purpose. What we artists do is important stuff.
When shucked and released from its edges the windowless subject stands alone as its own thing.
Our bodies apart from their brilliant role as drawing exercises are the temples of our being. Like the bodies of all fauna they deserve both our study and our appreciation.
Where there are few expectations expediency wins.
Exploit a subject or a theme to its greatest potential by bringing all possible reference to bear - then put aside the reference and create again using the potential of your unfettered imagination.
When I'm in the studio I often hunger for the road. And when away I long for the efficiency of the studio.
As we grow older we realize just how limiting were our earlier conceptions. Art is something else. Art is fluid transmutable open-ended never complete and never perfect. Art is an event.
It's okay to doubt. It's important to test. The way to discover secrets is to be a student of your own efforts.
Flowers are an education in a vase.
Which is better--feeling good or getting good?
Factual titling satisfies and is pure by its lack of bamboozlement.
One of the ways to learn is to know when you're making failures.
Flat uninteresting parts of paintings are in fact a ruse to get the viewer to see what needs to be seen.
Paintings like tombstones will last a good five hundred years well into twenty or thirty generations.
Sometimes you have to go through something else to find what you're looking for.
Do something others will have the desire to plagiarize but will find difficult to do.
With materialization in play you have magic in your fingers and you become the wizard.
When you serve your passions proficiency gradually takes over and becomes habitual.
Never forget that the nurturing and preservation of your own muse is job one. Lose it and you may be losing a great deal.
Artist gain knowledge but know that the greatest guru of all is the guru within.
I have always found it a testament to the importance of painting that the first thing many people do when their home is on fire is to grab their paintings and then run out.
Silent guns have virtue.
Waiting for inspiration is for amateurs; professionals get to work.
God may work in light but we mortals work in pigment.
Once as I sat painting I became aware of a man's face hovering near me moving closer and closer to the panel I was working on. When he spoke he said 'That is a fantastic brush!
A high price may be part of the mystique in selling difficult art.
A curiosity prompt heightens the senses and hones compositional ability...
Visual tonics such as 'timed creativity' need to be introduced to refresh and refurbish the muse.
The job of art is to turn time into things.
While knowledge of tools and the love of motif may be in your backpack and all mountains may be measured by their previous heroes art must exist for you in a place beyond the judgment of others.
People suspend judgment in the presence of mystery.
The short-goal habit is key to larger success and is at the root of human greatness. Life is think and do think and do think and do. Small steps can be greater than great leaps.
The overly-verbal artist is led by his understanding of things--rather than by direct observation of things as they are.
Novelty is vital to the stimulation of life... New neural paths are sparked by caving in to notions.
Watch the greater image materialize. You need that thing over there to tell you what to do about that thing over here.
I simply like the monumentality of the subjects - the opportunity for metaphor and the varied light that comes with high altitudes.
Your easel is the nuclear sun of an uncommon universe.
The studio is an extension of the sandbox and the kindergarten playroom. It has a dynamic unlike any office or factory. It's a room at the service of a dreamer on her way to becoming a master.
There is no progress without product.
I suppose what you're doing as a painter is making a record of your trip through life. I can't think of any job that is quite as satisfactory as doing a painting.
Whatever you do don't let your system run you.
Seems those with money who don't worry about money have big walls.