The
Hidden Sphere
(of Artistic Concerns) Cecil Orion
Touchon
7
This harmony is infinite in its
creative capacity.
Before anything came to be harmony
precedes it, shapes it, forms it.
After everything has passed away
harmony still remains.
It has no desire of its own,
it is selfless in identity
as is the silence between notes
of music.
Yet, like silence is for music,
it is the support and power of
all beings.
Therefore, the mastercraftsman becomes
selfless while working.
He does not impose his will.
He lets his work form of itself.(1)
For this reason he is a master
.(2)
footnotes
(1) I consider my studio a kitchen garden. There are artichokes over
there, potatoes over here. You have to cut off the leaves for the fruit
to grow. At a certain point you have to cut. I work like a gardener, or
a vine grower. Things come slowly. I didn’t discover my vocabulary of shapes
all at once, for example. It took shape almost despite myself.
Things follow their natural course. They grow, they ripen. You
have to graft. You have to irrigate, like for salad. It ripens in my mind.
So I am always working on an enormous number of things at the same time.
And even in different domains: painting, etching, lithography, sculpture,
ceramics.
Joan Miro, remarks collected
by Yvon Taillandier
“When I am in my painting, I’m not aware of what I am doing.
It is only after a sort of “get acquainted” period that I see what I have
been about. I have no fears about making changes, destroying the image,
etc., because the Painting has a life of it’s own. I try to let it come
through. It is only wen I lose contact with the painting that the result
is a mess. Otherwise there is pure harmony, an ease of give and take, and
the painting comes out well.
(2) "The best thing that a human can
do in life is to get rid of his seperateness or selfness and hand himself
over to the nature of things - to this mysterious thing called the Universal
Order, that an artist must sense. To put yourself in the way of that Thing
so that you become a vehicle of it - this will be your only merit - to
put yourself in the way."
Will Henry Stevens, quoted in Bernard Lemann,
"
Will Henry's Nature" (c. 1946-47),
manuscript copy courtesy of Robert P. Coggins
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