The photograph isn't what was photographed. It's something else. It's a new fact.

~ Garry Winogrand ~ American photographer 1928-1984




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Are you really sure that a floor can't also be a ceiling?

~ Maurits Cornelis Escher ~ Dutch graphic artist 1898-1972




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Light is meaningful only in relation to darkness, and truth presupposes error. It is these mingled opposites which people our life, which make it pungent, intoxicating. We only exist in terms of this conflict, in the zone where black and white clash.


~ Louis Aragon ~ French poet 1897-1982




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When I play with my cat, who knows whether she is not amusing herself with me more than I with her.

~ Michel de Montaigne ~ French philosopher 1533-1592




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The subject itself is of no account; what matters is the way it is presented.

~ Raoul Dufy ~ French Fauvist painter 1877-1953




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Abstract Art

The word abstract strictly speaking means to separate or withdraw something from something else. In that sense it applies to art in which the artist has started with some visible object and abstracted elements from it to arrive at a more or less simplified or schematised form.

The term also applied to art using forms that have no source at all in external reality. These forms are often, but not necessarily, geometric.

A cluster of theoretical ideas lies behind abstract art:

The idea of art for art's sake – that art should be purely about the creation of beautiful effects.

The idea that art can or should be like music – that just as music is patterns of sound, art's effects should be created by pure patterns of form, colour and line.

The idea, derived from the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, that the highest form of beauty lies not in the forms of the real world but in geometry.

The idea that abstract art, to the extent that it does not represent the material world, can be seen to represent the spiritual. In general abstract art is seen as carrying a moral dimension, in that it can be seen to stand for virtues such as order, purity, simplicity and spirituality.




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Poetry leads us to the unstructured sources of our beings, to the unknown, and returns us to our rational, structured selves refreshed.

~ Archie R. Ammon ~ American poet 1926-




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There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.

~ Aldous Huxley ~ English novelist 1894-1963


or from another poet......



There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors.


~ Jim Morrison ~ American singer/songwriter 1943-1971





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Buddha suggests to those who need inspiration for their art to go to it before a perfectly blank wall until its design, composition and subject reveals itself.

~ Jack Rutherford ~ American artist 1931-




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Lately I’ve been struck with how I really love what you can’t see in a photograph. An actual physical darkness. And it’s very thrilling for me to see darkness again.

~ Diane Arbus ~ American photographer 1923-1971





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One can not pluck a flower without troubling a star.

~ Loren Eiseley ~ American scientist 1907-1977





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Vivid images are like a beautiful melody that speaks to you on an emotional level. It bypasses your logic centers and even your intellect and goes to a different part of the brain.

~ Steven Bochco ~ American producer 1943-







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Maybe I am not very human - what I wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house.


~ Edward Hopper ~ American artist 1882-1967




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We are an impossibility in an impossible universe.

~ Ray Bradbury ~American writer 1920-




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One can never know for sure what a deserted area looks like.

~ George Carlin ~ American comedian 1937-2008






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Writers spend three years rearranging 26 letters of the alphabet. It's enough to make you lose your mind day by day.

~ Richard Price - Welsh philosopher 1723-1791




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Spend the afternoon. You can't take it with you.

~ Annie Dillard ~ American author 1945-





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Ghosts, like ladies, never speak till spoke to.

~ Richard Harris Barham ~ English comedian 1788-1845





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Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case, the idea is quite staggering.

~ Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, CBE ~ British writer 1917-2008




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Poetry is the impish attempt to paint the color of the wind.

~ Maxwell Bodenheim ~ American poet 1891-1954




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Vanishing points are illusive. They're all over the place.

~ Jerry McClish ~ American painter 1920-?




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I like an empty wall because I can imagine what I like on it.

~ Georgia Totti O'Keeffe ~ American artist 1887-1986




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