"It is not good for man to be too much alone unless he is really very big, with stores of knowledge to draw from and a clear brain to think with.  That's the whole problem:  a clear brain that can take thoughts and work them out, can filter -- clean out -- muddy, confused thoughts, can read meanings into things, draw meanings out of things and come to conclusions, a brain that converses with life and can, above all, enable a man to forget himself.  The tendency in being alone and not having anyone to exchange thoughts with is to be always on the fence between yourself and yourself."

~ Emily Carr (1871 - 1945) Hundreds And Thousands.  EMILY CARR COUNTRY Courtney Milne, McClelland & Stewart Ltd. 2001.

"..above everything else, Emily Carr was a truly great Canadian.  Her devotion to her own land marked everything she did.  She approached no subject in writing or painting with any condescension of purely artistic self-consciousness.  She was driven always by a passion to make her own experience in the place in which life had set her vivid and real for the onlooker or the reader and to do this with dignity and distinction.  She found life in her part of Canada often hard and baffling but always rich and full.  It was her single purpose to share through the medium of her art and in as memorable a fashion as possible the experiences of her life."  ~ Ira Dilworth


~ Emily Carr (1871 - 1945) Canadian artist, author. The Emily Carr COLLECTION.  Four Complete and Unabridged Canadian Classics.Prospero Books.  www.keyporter.com 2002

Emily Carr Exhibition, "From the Forest to The Sea" April 11 - August 9, 2015, AGO Toronto, ON

"When the artist is alive in any person, whatever his kind of work may be, he becomes an inventive, searching, daring, self-expressive creature.  He becomes interesting to other people.  He disturbs, upsets, enlightens, and opens ways for a better understanding.  Where those who are not artists are trying to close the book, he opens it and shows there are still more pages possible."
~ Robert Henri, The Art Spirit,

~ Betty Edwards, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, The Putnam Publishing Group, 1989

Thought for Today ~

"To be shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception, to be shown for a few timeless hours the outer and the inner world, not as they appear to an animal obsessed with words and notions, but as they are apprehended, directly and unconditionally, by Mind at Large ~ this is an experience of inestimable value to everyone."

~ Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception

"A good photograph is knowing where to stand." ~ Ansel Adams

"It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer.  You need less imagination to be a painter because you can invent things.  But in photography everything is so ordinary;  it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the extraordinary."

~ David Bailey

Miss Marple

"I may fling down a sketch in a moment, if my cat happens to be doing something droll, and then the page has received the seed of its structure.  Or it may begin with a deliberate and soothing geometry:  blocks of intricate text building up like rows of knitting, a tension between  organic form and implied vertical/horizontal axes.  The book, the pages, are physical things, and the way I make something with the raw materials is handiwork.
     There is nothing like the feel of the tip of a reliable, familiar pen gliding over the paper, leaving a crisp trail, and the sense of control in the fingers shaping beautiful letters.  Especially early in the morning before a cup of coffee has rippled the stillness of the waking state, to write is to luxuriate, and fulfills some indescribable need.  Then there is the boldness of brush lettering, the cooperation between the tip of the brush, which has its own shape and tendencies, and the guiding hand  working out a plant-like pattern made of thick and thin, curved and straight, sharp and rounded marks."

~ A TRAIL THROUGH LEAVES The Journal as a Path to Place, Hannah Hinchman, W.W. Norton & Company, 1997.
Tomorrow:  Hannah's "fit between experience and record by writing with 'summing up words.' " 

(photo lbw Thought for my artist friend Sharon)

The title reads:  "...a terrific treat on a winter's morning."

Van Gogh rendered several versions of his "mad" sunflowers ~ two of which currently hang side-by-side in a special exibit in London's National Gallery.

Journalist Alastair Sooke, writing for the British newspaper The Telegraph, features the Van Gogh exibit in an article, 25 January, 2014/January 27.  Comments are mixed.


www.nationalgallery.org
www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/artreview/105.org

Follow Vincent Willem Van Gogh or Van Gogh Museum on www.Facebook.com

Alastair Sooke The Telegraph
Photo: Julian Simmonds