Bits of what I'm reading these days

“It is something to be able to paint a particular picture or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful, but it is more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts." Henry David Thoreau

 

Howard Nemerov:

"The painter's eye follows relation out.

His work is not to paint the visible, 

 He says, it is to render visible."

 

Joseph Cornell: "The traveler abroad is dependent on outside things; he whose sight-seeing is inward can in himself find all he needs."

 

Emily Dickinson: "To shut our eyes is Travel"

 

Matisse about reading poetry every day before painting: "just as when you leap out of bed, you fill your lungs with fresh air."