It is a mistake to think that the practice of my art has become easy to me. I assure you, dear friend, no one has given so much care to the study of composition as I. There is scarcely a famous master in music whose works I have not frequently and diligently studied. – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

How much distance should there be between art and artist? I’d say no more than a lifetime. – Jarod Kintz

Like poetry, fashion does not state anything. It merely suggests – Karl Lagerfeld

The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable. – H.L. Mencken

The arts can sharpen the vision, quicken the intellect, preserve the memory, activate the conscience, enhance the understanding and refresh the language. – Steve Turner

A man who works with his hands is a laborer; a man who works with his hands and his brain is a craftsman; but a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart is an artist. – Louis Nizer

…The efficacy of psychedelics with regard to art has to do with their ability to render language weightless, as fluid and ephemeral as those famous “bubble letters” of the sixties. Psychedelics, I think, disconnect both the signifier and the signified from their purported referents in the phenomenal world – simultaneously bestowing upon us a visceral insight into the cultural mechanics of language, and a terrifying inference of the tumultuous nature that swirls beyond it. In my own experience, it always seemed as if language were a tablecloth positioned neatly upon the table until some celestial busboy suddenly shook it out, fluttering and floating it, and letting it fall back upon the world in not quite the same position as before – thereby giving me a vertiginous glimpse into the abyss that divides the world from our knowing of it. And it is into this abyss that the horror vacui of psychedelic art deploys itself like an incandescent bridge. Because it is one thing to believe, on theoretical evidence, that we live in a prison-house of language. It is quite another to know it, to actually peek into the slippery emptiness as the Bastille explodes around you. Yet psychedelic art takes this apparent occasion for despair and celebrates our escape from linguistic control by flowing out, filling that rippling void with meaningful light, laughter, and a gorgeous profusion. – Dave Hickey

…The efficacy of psychedelics with regard to art has to do with their ability to render language weightless, as fluid and ephemeral as those famous “bubble letters” of the sixties. Psychedelics, I think, disconnect both the signifier and the signified from their purported referents in the phenomenal world – simultaneously bestowing upon us a visceral insight into the cultural mechanics of language, and a terrifying inference of the tumultuous nature that swirls beyond it. In my own experience, it always seemed as if language were a tablecloth positioned neatly upon the table until some celestial busboy suddenly shook it out, fluttering and floating it, and letting it fall back upon the world in not quite the same position as before – thereby giving me a vertiginous glimpse into the abyss that divides the world from our knowing of it. And it is into this abyss that the horror vacui of psychedelic art deploys itself like an incandescent bridge. Because it is one thing to believe, on theoretical evidence, that we live in a prison-house of language. It is quite another to know it, to actually peek into the slippery emptiness as the Bastille explodes around you. Yet psychedelic art takes this apparent occasion for despair and celebrates our escape from linguistic control by flowing out, filling that rippling void with meaningful light, laughter, and a gorgeous profusion. – Dave Hickey

At this time of year it’s easy to forget the true meaning of Christianity – the lies, the corruption, the abuse. – Banksy

Dive again and again into the river of uncertainty. Create in the dark, only then can you recognize the light. – Jyrki Vainonen

The first demand any work of art makes upon us is to surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way. -An Experiment in Criticism – C.S. Lewis

The first demand any work of art makes upon us is to surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way.
-An Experiment in Criticism – C.S. Lewis

Everything in creation has its appointed painter or poet and remains in bondage like the princess in the fairy tale ’til its appropriate liberator comes to set it free. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

How to Draw a Picture (XII) Know when you’re finished, and when you are, put your pencil or your paintbrush down. All the rest is only life. – Stephen King

How to Draw a Picture (XII)

Know when you’re finished, and when you are, put your pencil or your paintbrush down. All the rest is only life. – Stephen King