Now I really make the little idea from clay, and I hold it in my hand. I can turn it, look at it from underneath, see it from one view, hold it against the sky, imagine it any size I like, and really be in control almost like God creating something.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the creative process and the power of imagination in artmaking.
Henry Moore's quote emphasizes the artist's ability to shape ideas into physical forms, illustrating the profound control and creativity involved in the artistic process. By likening this experience to that of a divine creator, Moore suggests that art allows for limitless exploration and personal interpretation of reality.
In practice
In a speech about creativity, one might use this quote to inspire artists to embrace their unique visions.
Recently I have been working in the country, where, carving in the open air, I find sculpture more natural than in a London studio, but it needs bigger dimensions. A large piece of stone or wood placed almost anywhere at random in a field, orchard, or garden, immediately looks right and inspiring.
I find in all the artists that I admire most a disturbing element, a distortion, giving evidence of a struggle . . . . In great art, this conflict is hidden, it is unresolved. All that is bursting with energy is disturbing - not perfect.
Between beauty of expression and power of expression there is a difference of function. The first aims at pleasing the senses, the second has a spiritual vitality which for me is more moving and goes deeper than the senses.
A work can have in it a pent-up energy, an intense life of its own, independent of the subject it may represent.
I have always liked drawing, when you draw you see things more intensely.
The secret of life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for the rest of your life. And the most important thing is, it must be something you cannot possibly do.
There is only you and your camera. The limitations in your photography are in yourself, for what we see is what we are.
Unfortunately many young writers are more concerned with fame than with their own work... It's much more important to write than to be written about.
I slowly dismantled the act of painting, to consider the possibility that no-thing ever really transcends its immediate environment.
In a long meter hymn, a singer - they call it 'lays out a line.' And then the whole church joins in in repeating that line. And they form a wall of harmony so tight, you can't wedge a pin between it.
We figured the audience would want good stories, great art, wonderful characters, people you could fall in love with that we would immediately put through hell.
Who are you, reader, reading my poems an hundred years hence? I cannot send you one single flower from this wealth of the spring, one single streak of gold from yonder clouds. Open your doors and look abroad. From your blossoming garden gather fragrant memories of the vanished flowers of an hundred years before. In the joy of your heart may you feel the living joy that sang one spring morning, sending its glad voice across a hundred years.
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