I can't live where I want to, I can't go where I want to go, I can't do what I want to, I can't even say what I want to. I decided I was a very stupid fool not to at least paint as I wanted to.
Georgia O'KeeffeRead
The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can clarify in paint.
Interpretation
Art can give form to the abstract feelings and thoughts we experience internally.
In this quote, Georgia O'Keeffe expresses the idea that abstraction in art serves as a powerful means of articulating and clarifying the often nebulous and intangible aspects of one's inner self. Through the medium of paint, artists can convey their emotions, thoughts, and experiences that are not easily expressed in words, thus making the abstract more tangible and relatable to others.
In practice
In a discussion about how artists interpret their emotions, this quote highlights the importance of abstraction in art.
I can't live where I want to, I can't go where I want to go, I can't do what I want to, I can't even say what I want to. I decided I was a very stupid fool not to at least paint as I wanted to.
I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for.
You are one of my nicest thoughts.
It was in the 1920s, when nobody had time to reflect, that I saw a still-life painting with a flower that was perfectly exquisite, but so small you really could not appreciate it.
Singing has always seemed to me the most perfect means of expression.
Objective painting is not good painting unless it is good in the abstract sense. A hill or tree cannot make a good painting just because it is a hill or tree. It is lines and colors put together so that they may say something.
I'd prostitute my talents if it would further my cause, steal if there was no way out, killing my friends or anyone else if it would help my art.
Sometimes I see it and then paint it. Other times I paint it and then see it. Both are impure situations, and I prefer neither.
I try to have each book be an antidote to the one before.
The pleasure of making things beautiful or useful involves your feelings as well as your thinking. When your original sketch evolves into a tangible, three-dimensional object, your heart is anxiously following the process of your work. And the love involved in making it is conveyed to those for whom you made it.
How I envy writers who can work on aeroplanes or in hotel rooms. On the run I can produce an article or a book review, or even a film script, but for fiction I must have my own desk, my own wall with my own postcards pinned to it, and my own window not to look out of.
The Image is more than an idea. It is a vortex or cluster of fused ideas and is endowed with energy.
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