Paint the flying spirit of the bird rather than its feathers.
Robert HenriRead
After all, the goal is not making art. It is living a life. Those who live their lives will leave the stuff that is really art.
Interpretation
The true essence of art comes from living authentically, not just from the act of creating art itself.
In this quote, Robert Henri emphasizes that the ultimate goal of life is not simply to produce art, but to experience life fully. He suggests that genuine art arises naturally from those who engage deeply with their existence, implying that the richness of life and authentic experiences are what inspire true artistic expression.
In practice
In a speech about creativity at an art exhibition.
Paint the flying spirit of the bird rather than its feathers.
Know what the old masters did. Know how they composed their pictures, but do not fall into the conventions they established. These conventions were right for them, and they are wonderful. They made their language. You make yours. All the past can help you.
The sketch hunter moves through life as he finds it, not passing negligently the things he loves, but stopping to know them, and to note them down in the shorthand of his sketchbook.
You form a society: that limits you. Adopt a name, and you've limited yourself again; draw up a constitution and bylaws and you've made a groove, a rut, that hampers your growth. You think you can fix your course and move straight along it. But sometimes the important thing is to strike out sidewise.
Do not let the fact that things are not made for you, that conditions are not as they should be stop you. Go on anyway. Everything depends on those who go on anyway.
Drawing is not following a line on the model, it is drawing your sense of the thing.
My music has been a sort of personal therapy. It's got me out of tough times, it has been the friend that I needed, when I didn't have a friend there.
Those of us who work in the arts know that depiction is not endorsement. If it was, no artist would be able to paint inhumane practices, no author could write about them, and no filmmaker could delve into the thorny subjects of our time.
When I'm writing, I'm trying to immerse myself in the chaos of an emotional experience, rather than separate myself from it and look back at it from a distance with clarity and tell it as a story. Because that's how life is lived, you know?
What I always wanted to get seen as was as a good actor, when it was the acting I was doing. When I'm writing, I want to try to be seen as a good writer.
The devil, the originator of sorrowful anxieties and restless troubles, flees before the sound of music almost as much as before the Word of God....Music is a gift and grace of God, not an invention of men. Thus it drives out the devil and makes people cheerful. Then one forgets all wrath, impurity, and other devices.
The human soul needs actual beauty even more than bread.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.