The work I most admire is blatantly in love with nature. When I see Egon Schiele drawings I think, what else is there to do but draw people (or houses, chairs) with such devastating passion and intelligence?
When I get tired of working in the sky-trees-fields landscape style I think of Charles Burchfield. His openness and ecstasy before nature is humbling. Obviously all I can do is pursue my own awe. Wyeth said one’s work goes as deep and as far as one’s love. I believe that.
Some beloved poetry-
.... I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.
-Whitman
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting….
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought…
...The only wisdom we can hope to acquire
Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless…
....There is, it seems to us,
At best, only a limited value
In the knowledge derived from experience.
The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies,
For the pattern is new in every moment
And every moment is a new and shocking
Valuation of all we have been…..
-Fragments from The Four Quartets, T.S. Eliot
When I get tired of working in the sky-trees-fields landscape style I think of Charles Burchfield. His openness and ecstasy before nature is humbling. Obviously all I can do is pursue my own awe. Wyeth said one’s work goes as deep and as far as one’s love. I believe that.
Some beloved poetry-
.... I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.
-Whitman
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting….
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought…
...The only wisdom we can hope to acquire
Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless…
....There is, it seems to us,
At best, only a limited value
In the knowledge derived from experience.
The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies,
For the pattern is new in every moment
And every moment is a new and shocking
Valuation of all we have been…..
-Fragments from The Four Quartets, T.S. Eliot