Quotes About Expression

The purpose of art is not a rarified, intellectual distillate— it is life, intensified, brilliant life. ALAIN ARIAS-MISSON

shadow artists must learn to take themselves seriously. With gentle, deliberate effort, they must nurture their artist child. Creativity is play, but for shadow artists, learning to allow themselves to play is hard work.

Fostering our children's creativity, we are fostering our children's spirituality as well.

We knew each other in Taos, New Mexico, where a deep source of our creativity sprung. I know her now also in Santa Fe, walking her dog through the chamisa.

The act of making art exposes a society to itself. Art brings things to light. It illuminates us. It sheds light on our lingering darkness. It casts a beam into the heart of our own darkness and says, See?

Gently set all ego aside and be a channel for my thinking to come into the world.

us a place to vent and a place to dream. They are intended for no eyes but our own. Virginia

The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through.

Mulling on the page is an artless art form. It is fooling around. It is doodling. It is the way that ideas slowly take shape and form until they are ready to help us see the light. All too often, we try to push, pull, outline, and control our ideas instead of letting them grow organically. The creative process is a process of surrender, not control.

Creativity lives in paradox: serious art is born from serious play.

Remember that in order to recover as an artist, you must be willing to be a bad artist. Give yourself permission to be a beginner. By being willing to be a bad artist, you have a chance to be an artist, and perhaps, over time, a very good one.

Writing is like breathing, it's possible to learn to do it well, but the point is to do it no matter what.

La creatividad florece cuando tenemos una sensación de seguridad y de autoaceptación.

To be truly human, we all have the right to make art. We all have the right to write.

Looking at God's creation, it is pretty clear that the creator itself did not know when to stop. There is not one pink flower, or even fifty pink flowers, but hundreds. Snowflakes, of course, are the ultimate exercise in sheer creative glee. No two alike. This creator looks suspiciously like someone who just might send us support for our creative ventures.

As we gain - or regain - our creative identity, we lose the false self we are sustaining. The loss of this false self can feel traumatic: I don't know who I am anymore. I don't recognize me. Remember that the more you feel yourself to be terra incognita, the more certain you can be that the recovery process is working.

The first trick, the one I am practicing now, is to just start where you are. It's a luxury to be in the mood to write. It's a blessing but it's not a necessity. Writing is like breathing, it's possible to learn to do it well, but the point is to do it no matter what.

Boredom is just "What's the use?" in disguise. And "What's the use?" is fear, and fear means you are secretly in despair. So put your fears on the page. Put anything on the page. Put three pages of it on the page. THE ARTIST DATE The other basic tool of The Artist's Way may strike you as a nontool, a diversion.

You do not take anyone on this artist date but you and your inner artist, a.k.a. your creative child. That means no lovers, friends, spouses, children—no taggers-on of any stripe.

The trick to finding writing time, then, is to write from love and not with an eye to product. Don't try to write something perfect; just write. Don't try to write the whole megillah; just start the whole megillah.

I believe that what we want to write wants to be written. I believe that as I have an impulse to create, the something I want to create has an impulse to want to be born. My job, then, is to show up on the page and let that something move

I am willing to be of service through my creativity.

Todo niño es un artista. El problema es cómo seguir siendo artista una vez que se crece».

La creación de algo nuevo no es un logro del intelecto sino el instinto de juego que actúa a partir de una necesidad interior. La mente creativa juega con los objetos que ama».