“Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.”
– Andy Warhol
art
Imagination, A Photograph of Art
“No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination.”
– Edward Hopper
Cheap Turpentine
“When art critics get together they talk about Form and Structure and Meaning. When artists get together they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine.”
– Pablo Picasso
Dreamer, A Photograph of Art
“Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.”
– Oscar Wilde
What IS, A Photograph of the Mysterious
“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious – the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science.”
– Albert Einstein
I took this photo in a garden grotto – while exploring its caves. I like that nature has made the bold statement of “IS.”
Of Course, A Watercolour
“Of course I’ll hurt you. Of course you’ll hurt me. Of course we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence.”
– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Look closely and you will see a heart.
This Valentines day, as I contemplate love, fear, risk and all that spring and winter brings me, l’ll take Mr. Saint-Exupéry’s advice and accept (stay open to) them all.
Lunar Moon Mood, A Painting and Poem with Robert Creeley
A Form of Women
by Robert Creeley
I have come far enough
from where I was not before
to have seen the things
looking in at me from through the open door
and have walked tonight
by myself
to see the moonlight
and see it as trees
and shapes more fearful
because I feared
what I did not know
but have wanted to know.
My face is my own, I thought.
But you have seen it
turn into a thousand years.
I watched you cry.
I could not touch you.
I wanted very much to
touch you
but could not.
If it is dark
when this is given to you,
have care for its content
when the moon shines.
My face is my own.
My hands are my own.
My mouth is my own
but I am not.
Moon, moon,
when you leave me alone
all the darkness is
an utter blackness,
a pit of fear,
a stench,
hands unreasonable
never to touch.
But I love you.
Do you love me.
What to say
when you see me.
Autumn, A Painting
Autumn is my favorite time of the year. Originally this painting was to be my representation of the Red-Light district in Frankfurt, Germany. Although for some odd reason it morphed into a painting of fall, or autumn, with all of the reds, yellows and browns – which I happened to finish on the first day of Spring. Odd..
“Zu keinem anderen Zeitpunkt (als Herbst) bewegt sich die Erde lassen sich eingeatmet werden in einem Geruch, der Reife Erde; in der Geruch ist in keiner Weise eine Verschlechterung an den Geruch des Meeres, bitter wo grenzt es an Geschmack und vieles mehr süss wie Honig, wo sie das Gefühl haben, dass sie den ersten Tönen. Mit Tiefe in sich, Dunkelheit, etwas von der schweren fast.”
“At no other time (than autumn) does the earth let itself be inhaled in one smell, the ripe earth; in a smell that is in no way inferior to the smell of the sea, bitter where it borders on taste, and more honeysweet where you feel it touching the first sounds. Containing depth within itself, darkness, something of the grave almost.” – Rainer Maria Rilke
Trapped, A Photograph of The Red Light
“What freedom men and women could have, were they not constantly tricked and trapped and enslaved and tortured by their sexuality! The only drawback in that freedom is that without it one would not be a human. One would be a monster.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden
Orange, A Photograph
“Oh Paris
From red to green all the yellow dies away
Paris Vancouver Hyeres Maintenon New York and the Antilles
The window opens like an orange
The beautiful fruit of light
– Guillaume Apollinaire
Little by Little, A Photograph
“Well, now
If little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you
Little by little
If suddenly you forget me
Do not look for me
For I shall already have forgotten you
If you think it long and mad the wind of banners that passes through my life
And you decide to leave me at the shore of the heart where I have roots
Remember
That on that day, at that hour, I shall lift my arms
And my roots will set off to seek another land”
― Pablo Neruda
Joy and Melancholy, A Photograph
“Our sadness won’t be of the searing kind but more like a blend of joy and melancholy: joy at the perfection we see before us, melancholy at an awareness of how seldom we are sufficiently blessed to encounter anything of its kind. The flawless object throws into perspective the mediocrity that surrounds it. We are reminded of the way we would wish things always to be and of how incomplete our lives remain.”
– Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness
Mary Garden, A Photograph
“However many years she lived, Mary always felt that she should never forget that first morning when her garden began to grow’.”
– Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
Hardly Moving, A Photograph
“I don’t want to stand before you
like a thing, shrewd, secretive.
I want my own will, and I want
simply to be with my will,
as it goes toward action.
And in the silent, sometimes hardly moving times,
when something is coming near,
I want to be with those who know
secret things or else alone.
I want to unfold.
I don’t want to be folded anywhere,
because where I am folded,
there I am a lie.”
– Rainer Maria Rilke
Woman Guest, A Watercolor Muse
“This being human is a guest house,
Every morning a new arrival….
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.”
Rumi – The Guest House
Earth Poetry, Photographs
Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky,
We fell them down and turn them into paper,
That we may record our emptiness.
–Kahil Gibran
I am an advocate of many things – of the arts, of humans, of trees, of philosophy, of poetry and literature, of interaction, of expression and of love. A man whose words have always touched me deeply were those of the Lebanese-American Kahil Gibran. If I could bring anyone back for an evening of conversation over a meal, it would be him. I’d like that – to sit in an olive grove with Mr. Gibran and just listen…
Olive trees, as you may have read in my past posts, hold an allure for me. I like that their gnarly trunks make this bold statement of, “I am here and have been for many years and will continue to do so,” while their dainty silver-like leaves seem to be fickle in their presence..almost blending in to the sky behind them…
Religion, A Photograph
“I have been astonished that men could die martyrs
for their religion–
I have shuddered at it,
I shudder no more.
I could be martyred for my religion.
Love is my religion
and I could die for that.
I could die for you.”
– John Keats
Man, A Charcoal
“Was it necessary to tell me that you wanted nothing in the world but me?’
The corners of his mouth drooped peevishly.
‘Oh, my dear, it’s rather hard to take quite literally the things a man says when he’s in love with you.’
‘Didn’t you mean them?’
At the moment.”
-W.Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil
Waiting, A Photograph
“The very essence of romance is uncertainty.”
― Oscar Wilde
On my last evening in Verona I walked through Piazza Erbe one last time. While resting at a cafe I noticed this young man waiting by a statue holding a red rose and looking nervous. I wasn’t going to shoot him, but then the old man to the left walked by him and noticed him as well. He gave him a look I couldn’t pass photographing – a knowing look. It’s not the best of photo quality…but it says a lot about the two men and their thoughts.
Blue, A Watercolor
“Perhaps only people who are capable of real togetherness have that look of being alone in the universe. The others have a certain stickiness, they stick to the mass.”
― D.H. Lawrence
Ode to Daphne/Mythology, graphite sketch
“I stand here on the summit of the mountain. I lift my head and I spread my arms. This, my body and spirit, this is the end of the quest. I wished to know the meaning of all things. I am the meaning. I wished to find a warrant for being. I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction. Neither am I the means to any end others may wish to accomplish. I am not a tool for their use. I am not a servant of their needs. I am not a sacrifice on their alters.”
― Ayn Rand
Arches and Walls, Oh My
While taking a break from writing today I sat at a bench and sketched what I saw instead of just snapping a photo… Here is a piece of my sketchbook.
La Bellezza Ha Una Verità Tutta Sua
Here I’ve decided to share another of my drawings/sketches. Although the figures I draw may or may not be me, they all contain me…
Beauty has a truth all its own.
La bellezza ha una verita tutta sua
Wood Horse Hunger
San Jose, California and Door Arts
Where’s the handles..
One Street Shy 