Here are some of my guiding thoughts about art:

• The Prodigal Son Rilke
• Creativity & Courage MacKinnon
• The True Vision, Hawthorne
  

Art as a Prodigal Son:

• "It would be difficult to persuade me that the story of the Prodigal Son is not the legend of a man who didn't want to be loved. When he was a child, everyone in the house loved him. He grew up not knowing it could be any other way and got used to their tenderness, when he was a child.
  
  But as a boy he tried to lay aside these habits....what he wanted in those days was that profound indifference of heart which sometimes, early in the morning, in the fields, seized him with such purity that he had to start running, in order to have no time or breath to be more than a weightless moment in which the morning becomes consciousness itself...
  
  During those years the great transformations were taking place inside him. He was now terribly difficult to love, and he felt that only One would be capable of it. But He was not yet willing."

– The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, by Rainer Rilke.

• "The most salient mark of a creative person is just this sort of courage...the courage to be destructive in order that something better can be constructed; the courage to think thoughts unlike anyone else's...the courage to stand aside from the collectivity and in conflict with it if necessary."

– Donald MacKinnon

• "The only way that he can appeal to humanity is in the guise of the high priest."
• "Take care of your honesty - search and the rest will be added unto you."

– Hawthorne on Painting

Affiliations

• ArtistSonoma.com
• ArtistMarin.com

Credits

Artist's Inspirations (Related Sites):

• I will always remember Botticelli and other fine art at the Uffizzi Gallery Florence, Italy.
• I have always been inspired by the poetry of Rainer Rilke.
• I love the Dutch artist Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn.
• I love the French impressionist Claude Monet.