I can't live where I want to, I can't go where I want to go, I can't do what I want to, I can't even say what I want to. I decided I was a very stupid fool not to at least paint as I wanted to.
Georgia O'KeeffeRead
To make your unknown known - that's the important thing.
Interpretation
The essence of creativity lies in expressing what is not yet understood.
Georgia O'Keeffe emphasizes the significance of transforming the ambiguous or the unknown into something tangible and recognizable. This process not only elevates personal expression in art but also connects it with broader human experiences, inviting others to understand and appreciate the previously unarticulated feelings and ideas.
In practice
In a speech at an art event to motivate upcoming artists.
I can't live where I want to, I can't go where I want to go, I can't do what I want to, I can't even say what I want to. I decided I was a very stupid fool not to at least paint as I wanted to.
I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for.
You are one of my nicest thoughts.
It was in the 1920s, when nobody had time to reflect, that I saw a still-life painting with a flower that was perfectly exquisite, but so small you really could not appreciate it.
Singing has always seemed to me the most perfect means of expression.
Objective painting is not good painting unless it is good in the abstract sense. A hill or tree cannot make a good painting just because it is a hill or tree. It is lines and colors put together so that they may say something.
Sometimes the beauty is easy. Sometimes you don't have to try at all. Sometimes you can hear the wind blow in a handshake. Sometimes there's poetry written right on the bathroom wall.
The stage was our school, our home, our life.
…words have been all my life, all my life--this need is like the Spider's need who carries before her a huge Burden of Silk which she must spin out--the silk is her life, her home, her safety--her food and drink too--and if it is attacked or pulled down, why, what can she do but make more, spin afresh, design anew….
Writers write to influence their readers, their preachers, their auditors, but always, at bottom, to be more themselves.
Seek for the boldest color possible, content is irrelevant.
People are fond of using military terms to describe what they do. We call it bombing when we go out painting, when of course it's more like entertaining the troops in a neutral zone, during peacetime in a country without an army.
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