A studio, like a poem, is an intimacy and a freedom you can look out from, into each part of your life and a little beyond.
Jane HirshfieldRead
What we want from art is whatever is missing from the lives we are already living and making. Something is always missing, and so art-making is endless.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Art serves to fill the gaps in our everyday lives, highlighting the perpetual quest for meaning and completeness.
In this quote, Jane Hirshfield expresses the idea that art is a response to the deficiencies we experience in our daily existences. She suggests that there is always something lacking in our lives, and the act of creating art is a continuous journey to address these voids. Art not only represents what we desire but also reflects our yearning for connection, understanding, and fulfillment, making the process of art-making an infinite endeavor.
Themes
ArtCreationMeaningLifeExpression
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in an art class to inspire students to explore their emotions through their artwork.
More from Jane Hirshfield
All quotes →as some strings, untouched, sound when no one is speaking. So it was when love slipped inside us.
Jane HirshfieldRead
Tree It is foolish to let a young redwood grow next to a house. Even in this one lifetime, you will have to choose. That great calm being, this clutter of soup pots and books-- Already the first branch-tips brush at the window. Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.
Jane HirshfieldRead
I write because to write a new sentence, let alone a new poem, is to cross the threshold into both a larger existence and a profound mystery. A thought was not there, then it is. An image, a story, an idea about what it is to be human, did not exist, then it does. With every new poem, an emotion new to the heart, to the world, speaks itself into being.
Jane HirshfieldRead
Zen pretty much comes down to three things -- everything changes; everything is connected; pay attention.
Jane HirshfieldRead
I thought I would love you forever—and, a little, I may, in the way I still move toward a crate, knees bent, or reach for a man: as one might stretch for the three or four fruit that lie in the sun at the top of the tree; too ripe for any moment but this, they open their skin at first touch, yielding sweetness, sweetness and heat, and in me, each time since, the answering yes.
Jane HirshfieldRead
Similar quotes
I started out as a poet. I've always been a poet since I was 7 or 8. And so I feel myself to be fundamentally a poet who got into writing novels.
Alice WalkerRead
Then I felt something inside me break and music began to pour out into the quiet. My fingers danced; intricate and quick they spun something gossamer and tremulous into the circle of light our fire had made. The music moved like a spiderweb stirred by a gentle breath, it changed like a leaf twisting as it falls to the ground, and it felt like three years Waterside in Tarbean, with a hollowness inside you and hands that ached from the bitter cold.
Patrick RothfussRead
It was my father's hope, and it is ours, that the National Gallery would become not a static but a living institution, growing in usefulness and importance to artists, scholars and the general public.
Paul MellonRead
A method of painting is a natural growth out of a need. I want to express my feelings rather than illustrate them. Technique is just a means of arriving at a statement.
Jackson PollockRead
If you give an answer to your viewer, your film will simply finish in the movie theatre. But when you pose questions, your film actually begins after people watch it. In fact, your film will continue inside the viewer.
Asghar FarhadiRead
Don't play what's there, play what's not there.
Miles DavisRead