Dear Jackie, I guess you didn’t know this but me and Abstraction broke up!!!!! Last summer!!!! Well, I mean, I’ve been feeling like kind of confused for a long time, like years. I’m friends with all of A’s friends and stuff, and I think A’s really cool and I totally learned a LOT from A—but you …
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For painters the studio is the Prison House, and paints are the fluids that circulate inside it. Alchemy’s lesson here is that everything actually takes place within the body. The insanity of the studio is that it is not architecture- it is not made of wood and cement- but it is nothing other …
https://ricdragon.com/2020/11/23/for-painters-the-studio-is-the-prison-house-and/
The harder truth of the matter is that most drawings are failures and that almost all drawing is merely practice. One draws especially to learn. You learn and you learn and you learn. You are constantly making new connections in your mind. You are constantly trying to stop old connections from …
https://ricdragon.com/2018/04/13/the-harder-truth-of-the-matter-is-that-most/
The slowness of painting—both in its creation and in its apprehension by viewers—is routinely overlooked because it is so often taken for granted. Compared to digital media, painting is always slow. When painters seek to speed up the medium—offering quickly rendered “fast takes”—they are often doing …
https://ricdragon.com/2018/03/04/the-slowness-of-paintingboth-in-its-creation-and/
Don’t try to be original. Be simple. Be good technically, and if there is something in you, it will come out. Henri Matisse …
https://ricdragon.com/2018/01/06/dont-try-to-be-original-be-simple-be-good/
For the greater the number of freely entertained different, mutually contradictory ideas, the greater the chance that their collision will strike a spark, ignite insight. & a house that is entirely secured is a prison. -Anne Truitt …
https://ricdragon.com/2017/12/26/for-the-greater-the-number-of-freely-entertained/
Good art should elicit a response of ‘Huh? Wow!’ as opposed to ‘Wow! Huh?’ Ed Ruscha, born on this day in 1937. (via whitneymuseum) …
https://ricdragon.com/2017/12/16/good-art-should-elicit-a-response-of-huh-wow/
It’s not a matter of painting life. It’s a matter of giving life to paint. Bonnard, as quoted in Timothy Hyman’s ‘Bonnard’ …
https://ricdragon.com/2017/11/14/its-not-a-matter-of-painting-life-its-a-matter/
I stand in a corner of the room, near to this table bathed in sunlight. The eye sees distant masses as having an almost linear aspect, without relief, without depth. But near objects rise up towards it. The sides trail away. And these shifts are sometimes rectilinear - for what is distant; sometimes …
https://ricdragon.com/2017/11/14/i-stand-in-a-corner-of-the-room-near-to-this/
To paint is to love again. It’s only when we look with eyes of love that we see as the painter sees. His is a love, moreover, which is free of possessiveness. What the painter sees he is duty-bound to share. Usually he makes us see and feel what ordinarily we ignore or are immune to. His manner of …
https://ricdragon.com/2017/09/27/to-paint-is-to-love-again-its-only-when-we-look/