Morning sun at the studio

* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.

It’s one thing to be intelligent and it’s another to enjoy thinking, to relish the time spent alone with one’s thoughts, to happily muse, imagine, and analyze.  Artists, who are introspective by nature, typically enjoy spending time in this fashion and may even prefer solitude to the company of others.  Able to work by themselves, artists are often lost in a state of dreamy thoughtfulness of the sort described by the painter Hans Hofmann when he wrote, ” The first red spot on a white canvas may at once suggest to me the meaning of ‘morning redness,’ and from there I dream further with my color.”  Artists are not introspective, thoughtful, lost in time and space because they wish to ignore the world.  They’re introspective because out of that attitude artistic answers flow.

Eric Maisel in A Life in the Arts

Comments are welcome!