Wednesday, February 24, 2010

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?'

Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of the universe; your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so other people won't feel insecure around you. We are born to make manifest the glory of all that's within us. It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone.

And as we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others"

Nelson Mandela


'Blizzard Bush'
22x16"

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

"It's true that the moral luck dramatized by modern art involves an uncomfortable element of ethical exhibitionism. We gawk and stare as the painters slice off their ears and down the booze and act like clowns. But we rely on them to make up for our timidity, on their courage to dignify our caution. We are spectators in the casino, placing bets; that's the nature of the collaboration that brings us together, and we can sometimes convince ourselves that having looked is the same as having made, and that the stakes are the same for the ironic spectator and the would-be saint. But they're not. We all make our wagers, and the cumulative lottery builds museums and lecture halls and revisionist biographies. But the artist does more.
He bets his life."
Adam Gopnik in January 24, 2010 New Yorker

Monday, February 15, 2010


"The gods are strange. It is not our vices only they make instruments to scourge us. They bring us to ruin through what in us is good, gentle, humane, loving."
Oscar Wilde


"Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure."
Rumi

Sunday, February 14, 2010

"What’s missing is art that seems made by one person out of intense personal necessity, often by hand....

.... Museum curators need to think less about an artist’s career, its breakthroughs and its place in the big picture and more in terms of an artist’s life’s work pursued over time with increasing concentration and singularity.

They have a responsibility to their public and to history to be more ecumenical, to do things that seem to come from left field. They owe it to the public to present a balanced menu that involves painting as well as video and photography and sculpture. They need to think outside the hive-mind, both distancing themselves from their personal feelings to consider what’s being wrongly omitted and tapping into their own subjectivity to show us what they really love.

These things should be understood by now: The present is diverse beyond knowing, history is never completely on anyone’s side, and what we ignore today will be excavated later and held against us the way we hold previous oversights against past generations."

Roberta Smith in today's New York Times

Thursday, February 4, 2010

"The fisherman know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore."
Vincent van Gogh


found at the water's edge in baltimore today

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

"Evil is the refusal to see one's self in others."
Richard Powers

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

"Only reason can convince us of those three fundamental truths without a recognition of which there can be no effective liberty: that what we believe is not necessarily true; that what we like is not necessarily good; and that all questions are open."
Clive Bell