Pearls from artists* # 724
With “Apparition,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 58” x 38” image, 70” x 50” framed
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With “Apparition,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 58” x 38” image, 70” x 50” framed
” data-large-file=”https://barbararachkoscoloreddust.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/img_1443.jpeg?w=604″ src=”https://barbararachkoscoloreddust.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/img_1443.jpeg?w=604″ alt=”With “Apparition,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 58” x 38” image, 70” x 50” framed” class=”wp-image-16608″ srcset=”https://barbararachkoscoloreddust.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/img_1443.jpeg?w=604 604w, https://barbararachkoscoloreddust.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/img_1443.jpeg?w=1208 1208w, https://barbararachkoscoloreddust.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/img_1443.jpeg?w=140 140w, https://barbararachkoscoloreddust.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/img_1443.jpeg?w=280 280w, https://barbararachkoscoloreddust.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/img_1443.jpeg?w=768 768w, https://barbararachkoscoloreddust.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/img_1443.jpeg?w=956 956w” sizes=”(max-width: 604px) 100vw, 604px” />
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on
Hokusai
From the age of six, I had a passion for drawing the form of objects. By the age of about fifty, I had published an infinity of drawings, but nothing I produced before the age of seventy is worth counting. It was at the age of seventy-three that I more or less understood the structure of true nature, of animals, grasses, birds, fish, and insects.
Consequently, by the age of eighty, I will have made even more progress; at ninety I will penetrate the mystery of things; at a hundred I will definitely have reached a degree of wonder, and when I am a hundred and ten, for my part, be it a dot, be it a line, everything will be alive.
I ask those who will live as long as I do to see if I keep my word.
Written at the age of seventy-five by myself, formerly Hokusai, today Gwakio Rogin, the old man crazy about drawing.
Stuart Horodner in The Art Life: On Creativity and Career
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