Catherine Jo Morgan: Quotes on creativity

The Forest Lover

Sun, 30 May 2004 19:04:13 GMT

It's not often that I read a book for the second time within a few weeks of the first reading. One of the rare exceptions is Susan Vreeland's new novel about Canadian painter Emily Carr, aptly entitled "The Forest Lover." Of course such a title would attract me immediately, not matter what it was about. To find the subject a woman painter who struggled with her role in life, felt out of place in her community, and eventually won acclaim and a full sense of her work - well, how delicious!

You may know Susan Vreeland for her earlier novel, "The Passion of Artemisia," about the first woman painter to succeed on her own. I loved that book too. But "The Forest Lover" is closer to my heart. Nothing inspires my own work more than the forests where I live. They're not Emily Carr's forests of the Canadian West. My forests are tamer forests, populated largely with the same trees with which I grew up in the midwest. But I understand Emily's passion for the trees and for the wild places.

Here are a few quotes from my first reading of "The Forest Lover:"

"To go to my grave without knowing whether it was lack of talent or lack of perseverance that failed me, without feeling that I'd probed deeply, without sucking the joy out of hearty work, that would be self-inflicted pain I could never forgive myself for." (p. 275)

"Someday, when some God-quality in her was fully in accord with the God surrounding her, she would achieve that one true painting." (p. 278)

"Do you like better to paint or to feel communion? They are the same." (p. 312)

"...how she could make love to the universe by painting." (p. 323)

"Maybe it was the nature of artists to crave praise. Something had to feed the inner person for the lifetime labor of bringing a perso's work to maturity. The trick was to keep praise from hurting that work, and to keep on seeking." (p. 323)

"It's your own reckoning you have to go to bed with." (p. 323)

Making art by the years

Fri, 28 May 2004 13:38:31 GMT

One of my favorite art quotations is from Robert Frost:

"I don't make poetry by the day or week, but by the years."

When I start to feel rushed, this is a good thing to remember.

Mindstorms

Wed, 05 May 2004 17:31:04 GMT

Here I thought I'd invented a word. It turns out that Mindstorms is a registered trademark for a Lego system that enables kids and adults to build their own robots.

"Mindstorm" occurred to me today as a way to describe a kind of fierce onslaught of worry, anxiety, paranoia, and turmoil. It can feel very much like a storm. It may grow gradually - first a cloud thought, then a gradually darkening sky, then the pitter patter of grim worry-thoughts. Then the wind may pick up. The storm can get very fierce indeed - like an attack from demons coming from far and wide. It can last for days.

Like any other storm, it ends. The mental sky is clear, even sunny. There's a memory of worries, fears, guilts, shames. But it's only a memory.

Emily Carr is quoted in her latest biography The Forest Lover, really an historical novel, as saying "Weather makes us passionate." As far as I know, she wasn't thinking of mindstorms. But perhaps it still applies.

Better to be lost

Sun, 01 Feb 2004 13:09:55 GMT

This morning I read a line I like:

"Better to be lost than to find yourself in the wrong place."

I got this from a message in the Collage mailing list at Yahoo.

Have you ever browsed through the groups organized at Yahoo? There's a group on just about every topic of interest. If it hasn't been organized yet, you can start one yourself.

I always subscribe by "daily digest" so I'm not flooded with emails. This way, I get one email from the group, that contains all the email messages from members since the last digest. Usually there's one digest a day, sometimes two.

Back to the original topic of this post. It suggests an interesting solution to being stuck. "If you find yourself in the wrong place...get lost!"

Compulsive virtues

Thu, 18 Dec 2003 19:49:16 GMT

Long ago I added to my list of Unifying Principles this one:

"Don't indulge in compulsive feminine virtues."

By "compulsive feminine virtues" I meant, of course, things like "being nurturing," "listening well," "cleaning up other people's messes," "encouraging others," etc. Nowadays the examples might read like a list of characteristics of the classic enabler, the compulsive helper and codependent. It's the compulsiveness, especially for women, that makes these virtues self destructive.

Today I realized that there must be equivalent "compulsive masculine virtues." These are things that a male is socialized to do, not only to feel virtuous, but to feel like a real man. Perhaps they include "protecting others," "supporting one's family at the level to which they aspire," and other virtues that I can hardly imagine.

Of course I'm not saying that any of the masculine and feminine virtues aren't good things. The problem lies in the fact that they can interfere with being true to oneself - to the Deep Self. They become compulsive masks that begin as protection and then eat away at the flesh of the wearer. (Now there's a plot for a horror story.)

Here's one of my best loved quotations, this one from John Middleton Murray, translated into womanloving language:

"For the good woman to realize

that it is better to be whole

than to be good

is to enter on a strait and narrow path

compared to which

her previous rectitude was

flowery license."

Anne Truitt on psychological insecurity

Mon, 24 Nov 2003 20:50:48 GMT

Here's another quotation from Anne Truitt's most recent book, Prospect:

"...but I have learned that living with psychological insecurity is critical to psychological growth. For the greater the number of freely entertained different, mutually contradictory ideas, the greater the chance that their collision will strike a spark, ignite insight. And a house that is entirely secured is a prison." (p. 207)

Anne Truitt on sculptures as prayer-flags

Mon, 24 Nov 2003 20:48:41 GMT

I've been rereading the sculptor Anne Truitt's autobiographical trilogy. A line from the last book, Prospect, caught my eye this afternoon:

"Transients wending our way on the earth, we press ephemeral marks on its resilient surface. We put up private 'prayer-flags' - in my case, sculptures." (p. 206)

favorite quotation from artist Tom Joyce

Tue, 07 Oct 2003 01:42:02 GMT

"We're all apprentices to ourselves."

Back in 1986, I went to my first national blacksmithing conference. Tom Joyce was one of the demonstrators. Watching and listening to him, I realized that he knew how to follow his own path of development. He was educating himself. First he thought of the forms he wanted to make - then he figured out how to make them. The tools and techniques followed the forms, not the reverse.

This fit in perfectly with what I'd read in Robert Henri's The Art Spirit.

So at the conference, watching Tom, I realized that going to conferences like that wasn't the way to make my own forms. No, they could only come from apprenticing to myself - free drawing, free forging, imagining forms and figuring out how to make them.

Without Tom's early influence on my blacksmithing career, maybe I'd never have found bowls - or found the courage to make only bowls. It's been a strange path sometimes. But at least it's been my own.

And when you're on your own path - you may be alone in one sense - but in another sense you're never alone. With you are the thousands, perhaps millions, of other people who have found their own paths and are following them now. And then there are the people who walked their own paths and have gone on. They're with us too.

Quotes on creativity from my Older Self

Sun, 06 Jul 2003 20:40:35 GMT

Today I started rereading some of my imaginary visits to my Dream Studio, where I can consult my Older Self. She's in her eighties at least, still going strong - radiant and fully alive, making art every day. Looking back at some of my questions and her replies, I began wondering why I keep looking for coaching anywhere else. Her answers are terrific!

Here are some quotations from Older Cathy:

"I don't listen to the news. The news of what flower is blooming today is more important."

"I don't stop energy from flowing through me, so it doesn't accumulate as fat anywhere."

"The time something takes doesn't matter that much. What matters is how alive I am as I make it. I prefer eternity to dollars per hour."

"...I find that my work flows best when I'm not reading. It's as if not reading creates a vacuum, an open space, into which my own creativity flows. Whereas reading fills that space - often very nicely - with someone else's creativity."

"Aliveness is at the center. And art is usually the most alive thing I want to do."

"Any trap you make, you can escape."

"A lot of your information clutter is about the past. As long as your resume is current, your finances current, your correspondence current - what more do you need?"

"Trying to leave too many options open drains your energy. It's like leaving all the doors and windows open and wondering why the house doesn't get warm even with the heat on high."

"You have to believe your life matters, that being alive now matters. Then making art naturally matters because it brings more aliveness."

"Hurrying up and trying to earn your right to live, just makes your life a sort of living death."

"Day off? Off from what? I want to be on, not off."

Knowing when it's finished

Sat, 14 Jun 2003 15:59:05 GMT

"A painting is finished when to have done less would be considered a sin and more a crime." (Ted Godwin)

Ran across this quotation at Robert Genn's "clickbacks" page. If you're an artist who doesn't subscribe to Robert Genn's twice weekly letters, you're really missing something. Readers respond to his letters by email. Then Robert prints a collection of these responses on his website. With each letter you receive from Robert in your email box, you can click on the responses to the previous letter. Often readers include photos of their work. I'm usually inspired, encouraged, and helped by this stimulation.

On the same website, Robert Genn also has an enormous collection of quotations about art.

Thu, 15 May 2003 19:32:42 GMT

One of my absolute favorite quotations, from Henry David Thoreau:

To improve the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.

Earlier artists

Sat, 12 Apr 2003 19:57:14 GMT

Gwen John: A Painter's Life, by Sue Roe, is one of the best I've read this year. Gwen John, born in 1876, was Rodin's model and muse, and became a successful painter. I found this book sometimes illuminating, sometimes sad, always interesting. One thing that I realized from reading this and the book on Matisee: the Early Years, is how much these artists studied. They studied in classes, studied alone, but were just always studying. None of this "now I have a degree, let's make money" or "now I've learned this skill, let's make money." It was all about getting better. The money was to buy paint and brushes so they could go on getting better.

I used to feel that way - that the only reason I wanted money was to go on making bowls. I needed food, rent, and art supplies. What changed this? Needing my teeth cleaned....seriously, the main thing that changed it was inheriting money from my mother. That gave me the money to buy a computer, a digital camera, a beadblaster, my studio building, studio insurance - and to "raise" my standard of living. Instead of spending $40-60 a month for food, I started spending $150. Add clothes, moving from the studio into the cabin and buying furniture and appliances, books, and more computer stuff...and then more computer stuff....it quickly started to look impossible to go back to a simple way of life.

Anything's possible, though. Certainly living simply is possible. I just need to choose.

This isn't about being a "starving artist." Being a "starving artist" is now called a "syndrome" and is supposed to be a sign of neurosis, faulty thinking, or at the very least, not being cool. As Marguerite Wildenhain said, "But somewhere between the point when you consider buying a Cadillac or a mink coat and the point where you starve, there is a lot of leeway." (The Invisible Core, p. 161.)

How did I know the page number? Back around 1983 or 84, I started a looseleaf binder called "Wisdom" and took notes from books that told me something about creative process. Now I'm on my third binder, but Marguerite is early in the first one. Some of her stuff I know by heart. Best is:

"As fleeting as clouds are publicity, fame, and limelight, but the good pot will endure through the centuries because of its integrity, its sound and pure purpose, its original beauty, and especially because it is the indivisible, incorruptible, and complete expression of a human being."

(quoted by the potter Charles Counts, in The Crafts Report, May 1985, p. 3. It was through Charles Counts that I learned of Marguerite Wildenhain.)

Thu, 20 Mar 2003 01:30:07 GMT

Paint like a millionaire....

I like this. Just read it on my favorite art message board, Wet Canvas. It's a positive statement of my favorite artists' quote:

"Art can't be made by a poormouth."

(David Smith)

It's true that many of my artmaking (or artcensoring) fears have to do with wasting materials, wasting money, and ruining things. I grew up in a very careful, thrifty home. This was good for survival. Now that I've survived into adulthood, and want to make art full out, I need to be willing to believe that there's plenty of iron, plenty of paper, plenty of paint. In other words - stop poormouthing and make like a millionaire.

Tue, 04 Mar 2003 02:20:34 GMT

Here's a quotation I found on the web recently:

“Thanks to art, instead of seeing a single world, our own, we see it multiply until we have before us as many worlds as there are original artists. . .” Marcel Proust, Maxims

from http://www.walterandersonmuseum.org/crosscurrents2000.htm