1000reasonsnottostartmakingart

[1000reasonsnottostartmakingart]

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. As for you, Agnes, you have so far used about one-third of your talent.

Martha Graham, Martha: The Life and Work of Martha Graham, by Agnes de Mille

[1000reasonsnottostartmakingart]

embarrassing myself

[1000reasonsnottostartmakingart]

I assure you: somebody, somewhere, is on the exact same wavelength as you are.

[1000reasonsnottostartmakingart]

Ansel Adams     Photobooth Self-portrait     Undated

“Life is your art. An open, aware heart is your camera. A oneness with your world is your film. Your bright eyes, your easy smile is your museum.” Ansel Adams

[1000reasonsnottostartmakingart]

also we fucked up as a society the moment we started telling teens and aspiring artists to conflate being an artist with building a brand as if the two things are inextricable. the name of the game if you want to share your art is to work a job and sell yourself as aesthetizied content. back in my day we could just POST SHIT. to deviantart! what the fuck!

[1000reasonsnottostartmakingart]

There is no escape. You can't be a vagabond and an artist and still be a solid citizen, a wholesome, upstanding man. You want to get drunk, so you have to accept the hangover. You say yes to the sunlight and pure fantasies, so you have to say yes to the filth and the nausea. Everything is within you, gold and mud, happiness and pain, the laughter of childhood and the apprehension of death. Say yes to everything, shirk nothing.

Hermann Hesse

[1000reasonsnottostartmakingart]

William J. O’Brien

[1000reasonsnottostartmakingart]

Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human

[1000reasonsnottostartmakingart]

For What It's Worth

[1000reasonsnottostartmakingart]

Ooh this is brilliant. Nice boxes too

If you missed the big Concerto in LA, now you can stage your own Quartet in Black & White at home, or wherever your dark place is. Do you have three friends?

[1000reasonsnottostartmakingart]

great interview for creatives

On the value of finishing what you start - Bao Ngo (The Creative Independent)

[1000reasonsnottostartmakingart]

Lynda Barry

[1000reasonsnottostartmakingart]

A Burst of Light, Audre Lorde

[1000reasonsnottostartmakingart]

you're not turning your fandom hobby into a job are you? giving yourself deadlines and quotas that you have to meet? focusing on the numbers instead of your enjoyment of the act of creation?

[1000reasonsnottostartmakingart]

megan lynne

[1000reasonsnottostartmakingart]

"God never gives you more than you can handle" is survivorship bias. People who got more than they could handle are dead.

[1000reasonsnottostartmakingart]

“I’m just, you know, kind of happy in the doing of things. Even just having a great cup of coffee is happiness. Getting an idea, or realizing an idea. Working on a painting…working on a piece of sculpture, working on a film. One thing I noticed is that many of us, we do what we call work for a goal. For a result. And in the doing, it’s not that much happiness. And yet that’s our life going by. If you’re transcending every day, building up that happiness, it eventually comes to: it doesn’t matter what your work is. You just get happy in the work. You get happy in the little things and the big things. And if the result isn’t what you dreamed of, it doesn’t kill you, if you enjoyed the doing of it. It’s important that we enjoy the doing of our life.”

— David Lynch