Great Throughts Treasury

"A picture can become for us a highway between a particular thing and a universal feeling."

"The power of beauty at work in man, as the artist has always known, is severe and exacting, and once evoked, will never leave him alone, until he brings his work and life into some semblance of harmony with its spirit. "

"Abstract art is a creative interplay between the conscious and the unconscious, with the conscious mind making all the final decisions and in control throughout."

"Every work of art which really moves us is in some degree a revelation – it changes us. "

"It requires a conviction that every people has a unique contribution to give to mankind, and that this they must make or remain sterile, subservient, sallow, and that this contribution they must have commenced to make before they can hope to understand the spirit that informs all great works and inspires all noble living."

"In the inner place where true artists create there exists a pure child."

"Art is not an amusement, nor a distraction, nor is it, as many men maintain, an escape from life. On the contrary, it is a high training of the soul, essential to the soul's growth, to its unfoldment. "

"The primary function of art is not to imitate or represent or interpret, but to create a living thing; it is the reduction of all life to a perfectly composed and dynamic miniature – a microcosm where there is perfect balance of emotion and intellect, stress and strain resolving itself, form rhythmically poised in three dimensions."

"New material demands new methods, and new methods fling a challenge to old convention. "

"Visible nature is but a distorted reflection of a more perfect world and the creative individual viewing her is inspired to perceive within and behind her many garments, that which is timeless and entirely beautiful. "

"Experiences, much more than instruction, are a seeing with the inner eye – finding a channel to our essential inner life, a door to our deepest understanding wherein we have the capacity for universal response. "