Drawing 2012

“You begin with the posibilities of the material” Robert Rauschenberg

“Art is the magnification of limitations. Art is doing everything you can within walls”. Brian Rutenberg

“Great art can arise from discontent and cynicism, but also can be born of wonder and serenity. Speak from your heart. ” Brian Rutenberg

“The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude. ” Friedrich Nietzsche

“A painting should grow like a living, breathing thing in which the ideas come out of the process. Starting with an idea and building a picture around it inserts a gap between artist and the viewer because the artist knows something that the viewer doesn’t, Starting with the possibilities of material allows the viewer and artist to form a social contract on common ground, free to make discoveries together because the painting begins in artist’s imagination and finishes in the viewer’s. Brian Rutenberg

“The art of painting is to see beyond the everyday familiar vision of things.” Goethe

“Whatever the genre, the truth of the art work is an expression of the artist willingness to be true to themselves. As a juror I am looking for art work that represents an honest expression for that style and media.” William E. Elston

“Art starts when construction ends; only visionary pictorial expression will produce a masterwork.” Hans Hofman

“Painting isn’t a nebulous, anything-goes activity but a cumulative practice that requires discipline and scholarship.” Brian Rutenberg

“I chose that my art be engaged in that which exalts the spirit of man.” Clifford Still

“It’s an intellectual decision to paint emotionally” Robert Motherwell

“If you are a painter you are not alone. If you meant it enough when you did it, it will mean that much. You paint the way you have to, in order to give, that’s life itself. It has nothing to do with knowing, it has to do with giving. When you have finished giving the look surprises you as well as anyone else.” Franz Kline

“Painting is a collection of organized interruptions: fractured planes, broken colors, and shifting lines. Real awareness doesn’t come in long dial tones of looking, but in the moments of clarity when the eye is halted and restarted, noticing things it may have missed before.” Brian Rutenberg

“Art allows us to think slowly because is made slowly, which is why copying others leads nowhere fast. Give your work time. It doesn’t matter where you got it, only where you take it. Be clumsy. Con artists take shortcuts; real painters take Lombard” Brian Rutenberg

“Art happens when the intellectual and the visceral collide so violently that they fuse into a third thing.” Brian Rutenberg

“The purpose of art is the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity.” Glenn Gould

“The best teachers aren’t those who solve problems, but those who give us permission to create them.” Brian Rutenberg

“By magnifying its limitations art shows us that perfection is unattainable; it’s the longing that matters. All artists live in the gap between what they imagine and produce; no finished painting ever looks so good as the one I see in my mind, but the next one might. Albert Einstein said – Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results – Art is part skill and part insanity.” Brian Rutenberg

“If it souns good, it is good.” ” The wise musicians are those who play what they can master” Duke Ellington ” The same applies to a visual experience. If it looks good, it is good”… “Whatever makes you feel the most like yourself is authentic.”Brian Rutenberg

“A work of art is a genuine expression of an individual’s (nominal authenticity) or a culture’s beliefs or morals (expressive authenticity)” – Denis Dutton ” Originality is for amateurs; consistency is for artists. Brian Rutenberg

“When conscious building of colors cease to force the painting on, I react by spontaneity, striking lines or colors into the dead structure to resuscitate it. Here intuition works explosively to shake up or dislocate known relations into an unknown which facilitate re-working. Thus conscious ordering toward expressiveness alternates with spontaneous “destruction” which, enigmatically are the most constructive steps in painting.” George McNeil 1908-1995

“Drawing is about captivity, Painting is about freedom.”… “Start as a bricklayer and finish like jeweler” Walter Sickert

“Colors seem to have a psychic life of its own. I sens sound in color and feel in certain combinations such as deep blue and black a mysterious and exhilarating sound. Color in strict area has a tremendous vibrancy and visual challenge.” Jeanne Patterson Miles 1908-1995

“I believe that painter’s judgements of painting are first ethical, than aesthetic judgement, flowing from ethical context. The ethical is the absolute and in all eternity the highest value. It comprises integrity, passion, dedication, sincerity…venturesome, knowingness, sensuality, sensitivity… Taken together they represent the ethical background of judgement in relation with any given work of modern art. Without ethical consciousness the painter is only a decorator.” Robert Motherwell 1915-1991

“Honest man, like honest picture, have a look of strangeness when first encountered.”

“To think while painting is a form of degradation.”

” Ideas always seek your measurements.”

” The space in a picture is right when it contains a full physique charge.”

“The essence of work is always something other than artist intended.” Robert Richenburg 1917 –

“To be a painter is a youthful folly persisting in old age.” Joop Sanders 1921 –

“No artist is all by himself. The continual interaction of ideas among others is the very condition of an artist. It is inconceivable for a person totally outside the field of art to be an artist. The artist instead of trying to obey the ideas of other in order to be more himself, ought to acknowledge that all outside ideas are really part of him. Thus he becomes free to use whatever he can in whatever way he can. Instead of being in a constant state of anxiety he can be in a constant state of absorption.” Jack Tworkov 1900-1982

“An art – like painting is itself a language of form and color in which complex intuition are expressed.” Herbert Reed

“The picture has no particular purpose. It only has the purpose of making us happy…..It should be something that preoccupies us, something we want to see frequently and posses in the end. It is only then we can know if it makes us happy.” Paul Klee

“Art does not reproduce the visible, rather it makes it visible.” Paul Klee

“Beauty is the cooperation of pleasures, truth the cooperation of perceptions” George Santayana

“Beauty can and should be defined. Western ideals of beauty are rooted in principles promulgated by the ancient Greeks and Romans, such as proportion, harmony, scale, line, contrast and the treatment of light. Art history show us over and over that the thoughtful arrangement of form and the calibration of color can transmit emotions and stir cognition in ways impossible to verbalize. That’s why it’s visual art.” Brian Rutenberg

“My goal is to present images to the viewer that will act as catalyst for their own imagination to create a story, stimulate an emotion, or evoke a memory.” Beverly Shaw-Starcovich

“Art washes from your soul the dust of everyday life.” Picasso

“If you meant enough when you did it , it will mean that much. You paint the way you have to in order to give, that’s life itself. It has nothing to do with knowing, it has to do with giving. When you have finished giving the look surprises you as well as anyone else.” Franz Kline

“A painting is finished when the passion is extinct… The essence of a work is always something other than the artist intended.” Robert Richenburg

“I paint things as I think them not as I see them.” P. Picasso

“I don’t steal, I use where I can” P. Picasso

“I want people who feel woried, exausted, overworked, to get a feeling of repose when looking at my painting” H. Matisse

“The only relationship of my paintings to nature is simply through me as mystical part of nature and the universe. A work of art for me is a window or doorway to every other human being. It is my contact and union with the universe.” Richard Pousette- Dart

“Artists don’t repeat but always change as nature does.” Mark Tobey

“I can’t just paint for money or to please.” Mark Tobey

“When the color has come to full growth, the shape is complete” Cezanne

“When you are exploring new territory you slowly develop personal style.” Unknown

“A good painting is a combination of thinking and feeling, otherwise a painting is either too sloppy or too stiff.” Leach

“The art of ideas leaves no room for getting bogged down in delicate work and well thought-out detailes: specific shapes, for example can prove to be a distraction or be misleading. Through far reaching abstraction, a seemingly natural equilibrium arises.” Jeroen Krabbe

“In nature, light creates the color; in picture, color creates the light.” Hoffman

“Fantezia artistului ramane ascunsa in meditatiile asupra picturii cu care a inzestrat fiecare panza cu adevarul artei, de fiecare data mai expresiv, mai profund, mai emotionant.” Vasile Grigore

“Daca culorile nu poseda in ele inaltimi spirituale, bucurii si dureri , ramanand numai o cantitate materiala, atunci nu cred ca poate fi arta.” Vasile Grigore

“Culoarea-lumina si contrastul comunica asupra simtirii si gandirii noastre o energie binefacatoare, contribuind la echilibrul spiritual al fiintei umane, tot atat de vital ca aerul si apa.” Vasile Grigore

“Pictez nu pentru a picta, ci pentru a descifra o mica parte din imaginarul infinit al naturii.” Vasile Grigore

“A implini si a nu finisa, a concentra si nu a adauga, a simti clar si nu confuz a exprima concret si a nu ramane doar o intentie, acestea sunt niste tabele spirituale fara de care nu inteleg ecuatia artei si frumusetea ei.” Vasile Grigore

“Repet mereu alfabetul plastic; linia dreapta, franta, curba, inchis, deschis, neutru, galben rosu albastru. Este cel mai mic alfabet, dar el cuprinde imaginea memoriei tuturor lucrurilor si gandurilor, este insasi esenta adevarului naturii si a omului.” Vasile Grigore

“Singuratate, nu pentru instrainare si dezlegare de ce-i omenesc, ci pentru concentrarea spiritului si pastrarea lui la inalta tensiune, pentru ca astfel sa poata comunica cu necunoscutul marilor adevaruri.” Grigore Vasile

Reading books, always with a pencil in my hand, like my father did, I used to underline sentences of interest, wanting to remember them, eventually copying them in a notebook. In time, as a high schooler, I had a collection of wisdom quotes organized by topics, which I highly treasured and shared with my friends, frequently writing some of them on my greeting cards. When I decided to start painting, I spent a lot of time reading in Seattle and Mercer Island Public Libraries and gathered a new collection of Art Quotes, this time in English, so I can share them here with you.

Read the posts that capture my favorite quotes: