We write from aspiration and antagonism, as well as from experience. We paint those qualities which we do not posses.
Interpretation
Artists often express their desires and conflicts through their work, highlighting what they lack.
Ralph Waldo Emerson suggests that the act of creating, whether writing or painting, is often fueled by a mixture of hopes for what we strive to achieve and the struggles we face. Artists depict not just their experiences but also the qualities they aspire to possess and the ideals they challenge, reflecting a deeper layer of human emotion and ambition.
In practice
In a discussion about the creative process during a workshop.
It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do.
Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.
Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations
Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakeably meant for his ear.
The world belongs to the energetic.
Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
There is no thing that with a twist of the imagination cannot be something else. Porpoises risen in a green sea, the wind at nightfall bending the rose- red grasses and you- in your apron hurrying to catch- say it seems to you to be your son. How ridiculous! You will pass up into a cloud and look back at me, not count the scribbling foolish that put wings at your heels, at your knees.
I long ago came to the conclusion that even if I could put down accurately the thing I saw and enjoyed, it would not give the observer the kind of feeling it gave me. I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at-not copy it.
One thing I tend to do is ask actors tons and tons of questions to try to get at what they're thinking but also to expose to them whatever box they've placed their characters in - to blow up that box so the journey can begin.
When I was born, the doctor looked at my mother and said, "Congratulations, you have an actor!"
Was it confusing because it was artistic, or artistic because it was confusing?
Without atmosphere a painting is nothing.
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