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.
When anyone seriously pursues an art - painting, poetry, sculpture, composing - over twenty or thirty years, the sustained discipline carries the artist down to the countryside of grief, and that descent, resisted so long proves invigorating. . . . As I've gotten older, I find I am able to be nourished more by sorrow and to distinguish it from depression.
Liquid architecture. It's like jazz - you improvise, you work together, you play off each other, you make something, they make something. And I think it's a way of - for me, it's a way of trying to understand the city, and what might happen in the city.
The artist need not know very much, best of all let him work instinctively and paint as naturally as he breathes or walks.
I didn't know Kurt Cobain or Amy Winehouse, but I was affected by both of their deaths because I admired their work so much and mourned their youth and work they would never produce.
A really well-made buttonhole is the only link between Art and Nature.
An actor really is a kind of intermediary between an audience and the piece, whether it's a play or movie.
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