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Artistic Vision Quotes

Browse 62 quotes about Artistic Vision.

Artistic Vision Quotes

“Practical affairs task the human brain throughout the day. At night, the mind takes a deserved hiatus to consider the impossible and the absurd. In the carnage of our nighttime sleep tussles, the colored liqueurs of the true, the possible, fantasy, and the mythic beliefs become intermixed. Eyelets of the commonsensical and the imaginative are incorporated, and a new realism emerges out of our distilled perception of the veridical derived from the phenomenal realm of sensory reality and the philosophic world of ideals contained in the noumenal realm. The resultant psychobiologic vision immerses us in bouts of intoxicating inspiration and artistic stimulation and leaves us rickety boned and weakened after enduring a dreaded hangover of perpetual doubt laced with vagueness and insecurity.”

“An author’s operating charter is to unearth embedded symbols that reflect complementary and inconsistent relationships of our collective assemblage, combine harmonizing and contradictory conceptions that motivate us, and delve larger truths out of variable and erratic elements of human nature.”

“Sometimes people can be negative, especially about my confidence. I trust myself, I refuse to obey, and I noticed there is a need to punish me for it. But haters are important because they show you you're doing something right. I'm scared of unanimity, artists who everybody likes. When you speak your mind and you're loud, you will attract negativity. But I have thick skin, I think the fact that I was severely bullied in my childhood helped me build strength and believe in my artistic vision. I deal with rejection very well. I have a lifelong vision and an unbreakable spirit.”

“That first evening home from the honeymoon, she'd hung a braided wreath of golden straw to catch the light of the setting sun and set a glamour over the table in the breakfast room--- to make it special, to bring Pierce's full attention from a stack of contracts to their first meal at home as husband and wife. The wine had seemed lusher to her, the vinaigrette on the salad brighter, the flash and shine of the silver and the creamy porcelain china enchanting.”

“All writers are demonic dreamers. Writing is an act of sharing experiences and offering of an individualistic perspective of our private attitudes pertaining to whatever topics of thought intrigues the author. Writing is a twitchy art, which attempts to employ linguist building blocks handed-down from past generations. Writers’ word choices form a structure of conjoined sentences when overlaid with the lingua of modern culture. Writers attempt to emulate in concrete form the synesthesia of our personal pottage steeped in our most vivid feelings. Writing a personal essay calls for us to sort out a jungle of lucid observations and express in a tangible technique our unique interpretation of coherent observations interlaced with that effusive cascade of yearning, the universal spice of unfilled desire, which turmoil of existential angst swamps us.”

“Witnessing the panoply of beauty in all of nature takes us out of our shell of self-absorption and makes us realize that we are merely bit players in the game of life. Witnessing the majesty of beauty confirms that the real show lies outside us to observe and appreciate and not inside us to transfix us. True beauty charms us into seeing the grandeur of goodness that surrounds us and by doing so, the pristine splendor of nature releases us from wallowing in the poverty of our self-idealization. The bewitching spell cast by the exquisiteness of nature levitates our souls and transforms our psyche. When we see, hear, taste, smell, or touch what is beautiful, we cannot suppress the urge to replicate its baffling texture by singing, dancing, painting, or writing. Opening our eye to the loveliness of a single flower is how we stay in touch with the glorious pageantry of living.”

“The human brain acts as a mere transducer of electrical energy. Our senses are on full alert when we are in danger. In contrast, when we are relatively safe and secure, our senses tend to slumber, making the world pass by analogous to a fuzzy dream composed of meaningless impressions. Inner turmoil causes energy surges in the brain. A spontaneously convulsing brain is an artistic brain. It is useful to write whenever one is in pain or feeling particularly introspective. Trauma awakens us from a sedated life. A clicked on brain displays greater sensitivity to the synesthetic perceptions that fill life with a diversity of sounds, colors, tastes, tactile feelings, and odors.”

“Art is the newly sprung river that keeps flowing at its own pace, based on its own unconditional knacks, passion, and its nature. Nature itself is art, and as such, art can be found in everything that belongs to nature. And in the world we live, there is nothing that doesn't belong to nature, for everything is nature, hence, everything is art. Even science is art, when it flows pure and free - literature is art, when it flows pure and free - mathematics is art, when it flows pure and free. Any act of the mind that flows pure and free, is art, for freedom is the soul of art.”

“We do not use writing exclusively to attain perspective upon our self-referential human existence. We dedicate our essayistic existence to witnessing the variegated acts of life. Our craniums serve as a personal planetarium, a full-dome personal theater where we can replay video and audio educational films documenting our scented and tactile observations. We feature recollections of evocative experiences, vivid daydreams, and frightful nightmares. A vast array of scientific visualizations and artistic depictions supplement our personal slideshow, knowledge we employ to frame our evolving self under the celestial sky and navigate our earthy existence.”

“You’ve got to do what interests you. And it can’t matter [how popular it is]—maybe it’s not what’s current now, or what’s being celebrated—but sooner or later people will take notice because it’ll have a vibrancy and a truthfulness to it; it is you, it’s you speaking, it’s you painting. So to me, I thought, why fight it? Let’s see how it goes. I have nothing better to do in this life, so let’s just see where it goes, and where it takes me.”

“My work was very meticulous and very slow as a painter and so the difficulty was—the question that my graduate thesis program had—was “how are you going to make a living doing this?” After I graduated, I continued on in the same way, but I discovered that I was progressing very quickly as an artist, and that before my pieces were done, I was getting tired of them. So I knew I had to find something that moved along quicker, that followed my natural path of growth as an artist.”

“In the beginning of Photoshop and Illustrator—what became Creative Suite—and to me it looked like another tool, another set of tools. And it fit in well with my photography. The photography had been there to support my art, basically, a way of gathering information and images in order to create better paintings.”

“I was sort of collaging and I would think, “Oh, I’ll collage this work and then I’ll paint it.” But as I progressed I began to realize that everything was changing: there were different ways of printing the work, and perhaps there were things I could use to develop the work that didn’t involve painting.”

“When I first started showing the “Indra’s Jewels” work, I had people coming out of the woodwork saying “Who is this guy? What is he doing? Who does he think he is doing this stuff?” and the more they’d find out they’d go “Oh, he was a painter? He taught for more than decade on the university level? He knows what he’s talking about? Oh, well let’s look at it a little closer.”

“The main criticism was really “he just presses a filter and gets these images.” But then they’d realize that I had learned how to paint and how to draw—that I had paid my dues, and I’d also been a graphic artist and a technical illustrator. And so I was able to show that I could draw with technical pens—and do anything that anyone else could do—and yet still was fascinated by this, and that sort of opened people up a little bit more. The more they knew about me, the more open they were to my explorations in the digital field.”

“Sometimes knowing what to shoot is a big relief. Other times, being extemporaneous is the way to go. I love to go out and see what the universe is presenting to me on any given day. Learning to be sensitive to what is out there with no preconceived idea is a wonderful way to discover new subject matter. But only looking for the shot that presents itself in the moment seldom creates new technical skills. In order to master the camera, I give myself special assignments. Giving yourself an assignment helps you to learn about photography and your equipment. By knowing what you want to achieve, you can plan things out. This way you can slow things down. Shoot and confirm. Take notes. Concentrate on getting the shot just right! You will learn to master Aperture Priority, shutter speed, ISO, manual settings, and more. Digital Camera, 2018”

“The temptation is always to think of Las Vegas as a gambling mecca, the ‘Entertainment Capital of the World’. Well, it’s that. But, it’s a lot more than that as well. There are beautiful natural rock formations, rare plants and animals, and even pseudo-alpine regions. Just because you can see for a hundred miles doesn’t mean that there’s nothing there to see, and open desert allows you to see things in a different way. There is nothing to block your view, and nothing to hide behind.”

“Living in the desert makes a lot of things very clear. It really gives you an unobstructed view. The severity of the landscape opens people up to their inner selves. St. Anthony went into the wilderness and was tormented by demons. Jesus was tempted by the devil in the desert. In an unexpected way, the Mojave is a very spiritual place.”

“At first, I thought I would use photography and the collage and montage possibilities of Photoshop strictly for visualization in preparation for my paintings. But after I experimented with Photoshop and digital photography, I soon discovered new possibilities and found exciting new ways of presenting ideas. I soon found that I was more interested in pure image-making than I was in actually painting the images. Digital Camera, 2017”

“Technology also made some of the established principles of image-making meaningless, such as the idea that symmetrical images are more static and perhaps less interesting than asymmetrical images. Symmetry is easier to achieve with mechanical means, so I used my collection of digital tools to break the rules, explore perfect symmetry and create repeatable patterns. Digital Camera, 2017”

“When I take a picture of a derelict sign, I already begin to see and find the patterns and shapes that will form the final piece. Once I get the image in the studio, I begin to layer the patterns created, making sure to save the patterns I particularly like. I never lose a layer of work during this process; I simply continue to build and modify those patterns that appeal to me. Digital Camera, 2017”

“Every emotion, every phrase or sentence, every bit of human action, can be a form of art. Art is not necessarily bound to the stereotypical notions of the human society. Art can come in the form of a little sentence, art can come in the form of a simple brush-stroke, art can come in the form of an everyday snapshot, art can come in the form of a plain strumming on the fret of an old guitar. Art doesn't require definition, and more importantly, art cannot be bound by the descriptions of words, yet words themselves can form the most rejuvenating and liberating form of art.”

“I taught an introductory creative writing class at Princeton last year and, in addition to the classic ‘show don’t tell’, I often told my students that their fiction needed to have ’emotional truth’ […]: a quality different from honesty and more resilient than fact, a quality that existed not in the kind of fiction that explains but in the kind of fiction that shows. All the novels I love, the ones I remember, the ones I re-read, have this empathetic human quality. And because I write the kind of fiction I like to read, when I started Half of a Yellow Sun […], I hoped that emotional truth would be its major recognizable trait. […] Successful fiction does not need to be validated by ‘real life’; I cringe whenever a writer is asked how much of a novel is ‘real’. Yet, […] to write realistic fiction about war, especially one central to the history of one’s own country, is to be constantly aware of a responsibility to something larger than art. While writing Half of a Yellow Sun, I enjoyed playing with minor things [such as inventing a train station in a town that has none]. Yet I did not play with the central events of that time. I could not let a character be changed by anything that had not actually happened. If fiction is indeed the soul of history, then I was equally committed to the fiction and the history, equally keen to be true to the spirit of the time as well as to artistic vision of it. The writing itself was a bruising experience. […] But there were also moments of extravagant joy when I recognized, in a character or moment or scene, that quality of emotional truth.” In the Shadow of Biafra (essay included in the 2007 Harper Perennial edition of Half of a Yellow Sun).”

“Each person must choose their own version of reality by living in a manner that ensures personal survival, appeals to their innate intelligence, and corresponds with their virtuous life decisions. … Each person must ascertain the proper and natural way to lead his or her individual life. We live only once and seek to make our singular existence count by leaving a personalized mark upon the world by contributing to human happiness or advancement in knowledge or in the arts.”

“In Utero is a testament to the artistic vision of Kurt Cobain. It's kind of a weird record, and it's strangely beautiful at the same time. And if you look at Kurt's paintings and his drawings - he even did a sculpture for me - it's a rising, tortured-spirit person. It's kind of weird. It's done well, but it's like what Dave was saying about having your own sound. Kurt was a great songwriter. He knew he had a good ear for a hook [and was] a great singer, great guitar player, and In Utero is a good representation of what he liked in art and how he expressed himself.”