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.
All writing is in fact cut-ups. A collage of words read heard overheard. What else?
A photograph is neither taken or seized by force. It offers itself up. It is the photo that takes you. One must not take photos.
All fiction is a process of imagining: whatever you write, in whatever genre or medium, your task is to make things up convincingly and interestingly and new.
Exuberance is better than taste.
I've always sought to express a tension in form and meaning in order to achieve a veracity. I have come to the conclusion that the art world has to join us, women artists, not we join it. When women are in leadership roles and gain rewards and recognition, then perhaps 'we' (women and men) can all work together in art world actions.
Inevitably, every part an actor plays contains some of himself.
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