G. Steve Journal

Nourished

Having a bad day?  Perhaps it's all for the best.  In an interview that appears in An Artist Observed: 28 Interviews with Contemporary Artists, The late Francis Bacon, considered Britain’s greatest living painter at the time of the interview in 1972 made this provocative observation:

But I feel ever so strongly that an artist must learn to be nourished by his passions and by his despairs. These things alter an artist whether for the good or for the better or the worse. It must alter him. The feelings of desperation and unhappiness are more useful to an artist than the feeling of contentment, because desperation and unhappiness stretch your whole sensibility.

[thanks Brain Pickings]

 

 

Sincere Sentiment

From an letter written by Van Gogh about the importance of honesty in art:

Do you know that it is very, very necessary for honest people to remain in art? Hardly anyone knows that the secret of beautiful work lies to a great extent in truth and sincere sentiment.

[thanks, Brain Pickings]

Light and Shadow

Photographers who chase storms always seemed to me to be just geeky thrill-seekers, but I'll have to reconsider after reading a portion of an interview with Mitch Dobrowner in which he describes his motivation:

I have always loved just sitting out in nature, hearing the wind blow and watching the light changing. I study the light and see photography as an exercise in painting with light and shadows. In inclement weather, light and shadows are always changing. … When I’m out there I always hear the mantra spoken by Edward Abbey, “Our job is to record, each in his own way, this world of light and shadow and time that will never come again exactly as it is today.”

(thanks Dish)