Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Signposts and Guides for the Creative Life

"There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into a sun."  Pablo Picasso

I think the operative word is "transform".  I wonder if that is one of the essential qualities of any work that is characterized as art.  I've seen many paintings that technically may be very good, but they don't seem to have much life.  The painter has not been an instrument of transformation, using her acquired skills to capture and transmit an experience in a unique way.

Frederick Franck is an artist I admire very much.  He lived a long and productive life and  his later years were spent in Warwick, NY.  I saw was a wonderful exhibit of his work in Poughkeepsie before he died.  Early works showed his incredible skills with line drawings, beautiful finely detailed paintings.   Throughout his career he played with every medium imaginable.  Toward the end, as his eye sight was deteriorating he took up the Chinese brush and his paintings became very simple.  But they were so moving.  I remember one in particular of a sun setting over water.  You could feel the heat.

May we focus on essence in our lives, may we be given patience to allow it to blossom.


1 comment:

Unknown said...

Thanks Becky! Sometimes as sellers we sometimes focus solely on what's gonna sell, and that's fine but we can't lose touch of our creative drive.