Speaking of Art

As music is the poetry of sound,
so painting is the poetry of light.

               Whistler




 A picture is a voiceless poem.

                           anonymously in 
                      Charlie Chan



               
To achieve this cheerful serenity is to me, and many others, the finest and highest of goals.  Such cheerfulness is neither frivolity nor complacency; it is supreme insight and love, affirmation of all reality, alertness on the brink of all depths and abysses, . . .  It is the secret of beauty and the real substance of all art.


                         Hermann Hesse
                                    The Glass Bead Game




The human race has spent several millennia developing a huge and robust set of observations about the world, in forms as varied as language, art, and religion.  Those observations in turn have withstood many tests. . .  Most of what we inherit is so clearly correct it goes unseen. . .  But despite its richness and variability, the well defined world we inherit doesn’t quite fit each of us, individually. . .  - and no matter how benign this ready made world may be, there will always be times when something is missing or doesn’t quite ring true.  And so you make your place in the world by making part of it - by contributing some new part to the set. And surely one of the more astonishing rewards of art making comes when people make time to visit the world you have created.  Some, indeed, may even purchase a piece of your world to carry back and adopt as their own.  Each new piece of your art enlarges our reality.  The world is not yet done.


                                     David Bales and Ted Orland
          Art & Fear




It soon became clear to us that these paintings were done as an act of devotion, irrespective of whether they would be seen or not; they were more than merely decorations:  they were prayers and meditations in line and color.


                                       Lama Anagorika Govinda
                                      Way of the White Clouds





Lovers find secret places 
inside this violent world 
where they make transactions
with beauty.

                            Rumi
                                                Bridge to the Soul


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Beauty is the revelation of harmony through forms, whether visible or audible, material or immaterial.  However transient the forms may be, the harmony they express and embody belongs to the eternal realm of the spirit.

                           Lama Anagorika Govinda
                                  The Way of the White Clouds