| Notes, Quotes and Links from David Clow's Notebook |
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| Click on the Artist below for More Information |
| Misc Artist and Galleries you might like... Click on the Gallery below for more info.. . Trailside Galleries... Scottsdale Shoal Creek Gallery... Austin Meyer Gallery... Scottsdale Mountain Trails Gallery... Sodona Claggett Rey Gallery Fox Gallery Artist Plein Air Artist of American Tucson Plein Air Painters Society Good Links for Plein Air Painters California Painters Art of the West Artist List of very good Art Books |
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Favorite quotes… Edgar Whitney said, “ The nature and essence of watercolor is its spontaneity, the swift seizure of a single impression. Watercolor has three glories or virtues; Lovelier precipitations, faster rhythms and transparency. Its white paper showing through a wash is the closest approximation to light in all the media, and light is the loveliest thing that exists.” "When you go out to paint, try to forget what objects you have in front of you, A tree, A field…Merely think, Here is a little square of blue, Here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow, and paint it just as it looks to you, the exact color and shape, until it gives your own naïve impression of the scene." Claude Monet (1840-1926) "Some advice: do not paint too much after nature. Art is an abstraction; derive this abstraction from nature while dreaming before it, and think more of the creation which will result than of nature. Creating like our Divine Master is the only way of rising toward God." Paul Gauguin(1848-1903) "Every artist dips his brush into his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures." Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) "There is no way to success in art but to take off your coat, grind paint, and work like a digger on the railroad, all day and every day." From CONDUCT OF LIFE: Power by RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803-1882) "It is not to be despised, in my opinion, if, after gazing fixedly at the spot on the wall, the coals in the grate, the clouds, the flowing stream, one remembers some of their aspects; and if you look at them carefully you will discover some quite admirable inventions. Of these the genius of the painter may take full advantage, to compose battles of animals and of men, of landscapes or monster, of devils and other fantastic things." LEONARDO DA VINCI (1452-1519) "No art was ever less spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of refection and study; of inspiration, spontaneity, temperament, In know nothing EDGAR DEGAS "A MAN PAINTS WITH HIS BRAINS AND NOT WITH HIS HANDS. --Michelangeo (1475-1564) "Artists can color the sky red because they know it's blue. Those of us who aren't artist must color things the way they really are or people might think we're stupid. JULES FEIFFER "Less is More" ---Mies van der Rohe "All profoundly original art looks ugly at first. CLEMENT GREENBERG “ I shut my eyes in order to see." PAUL GAUGUIN "A painter who has the feel of breasts and buttocks is saved." AUGUSTE RENOIR "For the most part theories serve only to mask the shortcomings of the artist . . . Theories are worked out afterwards. AUGUSTE RENOIR "It is better to paint form memory, for thus you work will be your own; you sensation, your intelligence, and your soul will triumph over the eye of the amateur. . . Do not finish your work too much. PAUL GAUGUIN "There is no must in art because art is free." VASILY KANDINSKY With an apple I will astonish Paris PAUL CEZANNE "If a young person came to me and said he wanted to be a sculptor and asked what advice I'd give him, I'd tell him to see as much of past sculpture as he could, from primitive times to the present day. Perhaps more important, I would tell him to spend years and years learning to draw. You learn to draw because drawing makes you look. You may do a very bad drawing, but if you try to draw something, you look much more intensely than if you just look. And this is its value. I would make drawing a part of general education for everybody." HENRY MOORE on Sculpting "The art of the sculptor is made of strength, exactitude, and will. In order to express life, to render nature, one must will and will and will with all the strength of heart and brain; nature exceeds-and greatly-human genius; she is superior in everything; to believe that you can wanting to measure the stars with your hands. There are unknown forces in nature; when we give ourselves wholly to her, without reserve, she lends them to us; she shows us these forms, which our watching eyes do not see, which our intelligence does not understand or suspect . In art, to admit only what one understands leads to impotence." Auguste Rodin on Sculpting "A subject that is beautiful in itself gives no suggestion to the artist. It lacks imperfection." Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) "Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. Pablo Picasso "Life is short, art long, opportunity fleeting, experience treacherous, judgment difficult. Hippocrates (460?-360? BC ) This is true of all art; the ennui of living and willing ceases at the door of every workshop. Jacques Maritain The secret of great art is to rob the moment of its impermanence. Ivan Lissner The philosophy which is so important in each of us is not a technical matter; it is our more or less dumb sense of what life honestly and deeply means. It is only partly got from books; it is our individual way of just seeing and feeling the total push and pressure of the cosmos. Will James I had to learn to think, feel, and see in a totally new fashion, in an uneducated way, in my own way, which is the hardest thing in the world. I had to throw myself into the current, knowing that I would probably sink. Henry Miller In the ultimate sense, the world itself is pregnant with failure, is the perfect manifestation of imperfection of the consciousness of failure... the artist expresses himself by and through imperfection. It is the stuff of life, the very sign of livingness. Henry Miller I had leamed to harness ignorance with presumption. I was ready to become an unacknowledged watercolorist. Henry Miller The way of a creative mind is always positive, it always asserts; it does not know the doubts which are so characteristic of the scientific mind. Naum Gabo No passion so effectively robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear. Edmund Burke Photography does not create eternity as does art. It embalms time and rescues it from its proper corruption. A.D. Coleman Who told you that one paints with colors? One makes use of colors, but one paints with emotions. Chardin Chase taught them to use their eyes, Henri to enlist their hearts, while Miller insisted that they use their heads. Rockwell Kent Utterly disregardful of the emotional values which Henri was insistent upon, the contemptuous of both the surface realism and virtuosity of Chase, Miller, an artist in a far more precious sense than either, exacted a recognition of the tactile qualities of paint and of the elements of composition -line and mass -not as a means toward the recreation of life but as the fulfillment of an end, aesthetic pleasure. Rockwell Kent The beginning and end of all literary activity is the reproduction of the world that surrounds me by the means of the world that is in me, all things being grasped, related, created, molded and reconstructed in a personal form and original manner. Goethe (carried in Hopper's wallet) I believe that the great painters, with their intellects as master, have attempted to force this unwilling medium of paint and canvas into a record of their emotions. I find any digression from this large aim leads me to boredom. Hopper Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination are omnipotent. Calvin Coolidge To pursue an interdisciplinary subject is to pursue an echo, since in either case one must be reconciled to endless pursuit and uncertain victory. William Charles Libby What the painter adds to the canvas are the days of his life. The adventure of living, hurtling toward death. Sartre Remember, we're all in this alone. Lily Tomlin It is not by his mixing and choosing, but by the shapes of his colors, and the combinations of those shapes, that we recognize the colorist. Color becomes significant only when it becomes form. Clive Bell The avoidance of pain is the cause of all non-creative work. M. Scott Peck Sick, battered, defeated, home I came and sat and stared with envy at the clock for which dark or bright days are the same and every moment either tick or tock. E.A. Whitney How blessed I am with an inordinate delight in the simple amenities. E.A. Whitney Art is pleasure objectified. E.A. Whitney And. then I began to realize that however professional my work might appear, even however original it might be, it still did not contain the central person which, for good or ill, was myself. Ben Shahn Conception is the choice, the decision, of which emotion to transmit. Composition is the choice of means capable of transmitting this emotion. Le Corbusier -It is not the worldly eclecticism of knowledge of many things that enriches, but perseverance in a favorable furrow and loving, silent effort of a whole life. Rouault Color is the fruit of life. Apollinaire TO think effectively in terns of relations of qualities is as severe a demand upon thought as to think in terms of symbols, verbal and mathematical. Indeed, since words are easily manipulated in mechanical ways, the production of a work of genuine art probably demands more intelligence than does most of the so-called thinking that goes on among those who pride themselves on being 'intellectuals.' John Dewey Watercolor condenses time and consolidates experience. Frank Marcello In our minds are ideas, before our minds are objects. Mortimer Adler In the last analysis don't mind whether your work is good or bad so long as it has the completeness, the enormity of the whole world which you love. Stephen Spender Art is a form of supremely delicate awareness and atonement -meaning atoneness, the state of being at one with the object. D.H. Lawrence Sometimes I feel like I'm a Piece of sculpture that's being chipped till I'm becoming myself. Nat Youngblood The first impression of a work of art is its otherness from reality. Suzanne K. Langer I paint only because I love to cut mats. Arthur Alexander It is very easy to paint a painting which is difficult to understand, and vice versa. WHETHER A painting is modern or not depends upon the following: The degree to which design is seen as subject matter and improvisation is used as method; in the measure that it has equalized surface tension, or, in other words, refused to destroy the flat surface covered with paint. Jean Cocteau put it this way, "A picture is not a window." Indication of depth can be made, but surface unity must not be destroyed by holes. Giotto as modern as C6zanne."-Edward Hopper. "INTUITION IN art is actuallv the result of prolonged tuition." Ben Shahn I had a teacher who insisted that taste in space divisions and color was congenital. He was wrong. Taste in our activity is learned, precisely as tasteful, gracious living and good manners are learned. No baby ever had them. The amateur is afraid of boldness; the professional 's afraid of timidity. ONE REWARD for sketching is that you learn to "see." This gives vou a very rich source of entertainment for the rest of your life. Drawing is in one sense greater than painting. It records perfectly, more Simply, and directly the personality of the artist. THE ARTIST's quest is self-discovery. The sketchbook is the shortest route to that objective. A SKETCH can have greatness in it. ART CONVEYS wbat the artist knows about feelings, wbicb is knowledge. Suzanne Langer THERE ARE no gimmicks in the learning process. You sweat, digging deep, or your knowledge is superficial. "NEVER REMAIN too long at one point, forever repeating the too familiar." Konstantin Stanislavsky THE ARTIST'S concern has three subdivisions: (1) perception (2) conception (3) craft. All are subject to development. "THE MERIT of originality is not novelty, it 's sincerity." Carlyle SCHOLARSHIP, YES, but deliberately avoid the mind imprisoned by what it has been taught, its refusal to think for itself. "A WORK OF ART we all agree is a unique product, but why? It is unique not because it is clever or noble or beautiful or enlightened or original or sincere or idealistic or useful or educational. It may embody any of those qualities, but because it is the only material object in the universe which may possess internal harmony. All others, have been pressed into shapes from outside, and when the mold is removed they collapse. The work of art stands up by itself, and nothing else does." E. M. Forster “LOVE of anything is the offspring of knowledge, love being more fervent in proportion as knowledge is more certain." Leonardo da Vinci Like the Child connecting the dots… The Artist should present the dots and the viewer then connects them using his own experiences, emotions and desires… There was a single blue line of crayon drawn across every wall in the house. What does it mean?.. spoken to the child. A pirate needs the sight of the sea, he said then he pulled his eye patch down and turned and sailed away. |
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| Ed Whitney Photo by Maddi Alana |
| Paintings below are by David Clow |
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