Rita Dove

"Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful."

— Rita Dove

American Poet

1952 - 

If you stripped your art down to the bare bones, what would be left?  A line? A word?  An emotion?  If you look at the history of the arts, you will notice that artists vacillate between extravagance and simplicity, between embellishment and bare bones.  My style has been one of simple speech, with few big words or large flourishes.  If you distilled your art down to its essence, what would you find?  What is at the core of your art?

April is poetry month.  Here is a poem by Rita Dove.

"Teach Us To Number Our Days"

In  the old neighborhood, each funeral parlor

is more elaborate than the last.

The alleys smell of cops, pistols bumping their thighs,

each chamber steeled with a slim blue bullet.

Low-rent balconies stacked to the sky.

A boy plays tic-tac-toe on a moon

crossed by TV antennae, dreams

he has swallowed a blue bean.

It takes root in his gut, sprouts

and twines upward, the vines curling

around the sockets and locking them shut.

And this sky, knotting like a dark tie?

The patroller, disinterested, holds all the beans.

August.  The mums nod past, each prickly heart on a sleeve.

(By Rita Dove from Yellow House on the Corner, Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1989)

Here is Rita Dove reading another of her poems.

James Galvin

"Let us begin with a simple line,

Drawn as a child would draw it,

To indicate the horizon...."

— James Galvin

American Poet

1951 -

In drawing and writing, we almost always begin with the line.  The line turns into letters which turn into words which turn into sentences.  And eventually the sentences become poems, short stories and novels.  The same is often true is art.  The line becomes an eye, then a nose and soon a face.  The drawing begins as a simple line much like what a child starts with.  The artist then transforms that line into a beautiful portrait, landscape or abstract painting.

When we begin the canvas and the paper are blank, empty, without much meaning.  As creative artists our job is transform that paper or that canvas into more.  To create something out of a simple line.  To communicate our vision of the world through a simple line joined with other simple lines — one built on another.

The same can be said about life.  Each moment we live is like a simple line.  We build a life through living each moment to the fullest.  And millions of moments become a life lived.  

Here is the poem, Art Class, by James Galvin.

Art Class

By James Galvin

Let us begin with a simple line,

Drawn as a child would draw it,

To indicate the horizon,

More real than the real horizon,

Which is less than line,

Which is a visible abstraction, a ratio.

The line ravishes the page with implications

Of white earth, white sky!

The horizon moves as we move,

Making us feel central.

But the horizon is an empty shell —

Strange radius whose center is peripheral.

As the horizon draws us on, withdrawing,

The line draws us in,

Requiring further lines,

Engendering curves, verticals, diagonals,

Urging shades, shapes, figures...

What should we place, in all good faith,

On the horizon? A stone?

An empty chair? A submarine?

Take your time.  Take it easy.

The horizon will not stop abstracting us.

Rico Lebrun

"True lines do not exist in nature; we invent them.  They are poetic fiction."  

— Rico Lebrun

Italian Artist

1900 - 1964

Turtle

All creative works of art are fiction.  They do not exist in reality.  Even the most realistic painting or novel have no existence in reality.  They approximate reality.  A painting of a rose is never going to match the real rose in the garden.  Human creativity does have limits.  We can not create the world in which we live.  And this is okay.  We are not gods.  We are not perfect.  Sometimes it is best to accept our limitations than to become frustrated in our attempts to overcome our limitations.

Joan Miro

The Garden 2

Joan Miro

"More important than a work of art itself is what it will sow.  Art can die, a painting can disappear.  What counts is the seed."

Joan Miro

Spanish Painter/Sculptor

1893 - 1983

Joan Miro

Growing up in a conservative Mennonite family, I was not exposed to art as a child.  My maternal grandfather even discouraged photographs.  My first exposure to art came my freshman year in college where in one of my classes we had to choose an artist to study.  I chose Miro and his paintings planted in my soul a love of art.  Artists, musicians and writers all plant seeds with their works of art.  A great novel stays with you long after you have read it.  When you fall in love with a painting, you come back to it again and again for it to refresh your soul.  How many times do you listen to the same piece of music over and over.  And each time you hear it years later, it brings back waves of emotion.  

What seeds are you planting with your writing, your painting or your music?  How is your art impacting your audience? What seeds have you planted in their souls?  

I am curious.  Please share with me who were the first artists, writers and musicians to touch your life.

Piet Mondrian

Composition #2 Piet Mondrian

"Everyone knows that even a single line may convey an emotion."

— Piet Mondrian

Dutch Painter

1872 - 1944

The line is one of the smallest elements of a drawing or a painting.  The line is the beginning of what is to be.  And in that beginning the line conveys the emotion to come, the story to be told.  All art begins some where.  For the artist it is the line.  For the writer it is the word.  For the musician it is the note.  And the line becomes the skeleton, the core of what is created.

I recently discovered the drawings of Michael Kirby.  He has the powerful ability to convey emotion with simple lines.  Check out his blog at:

http://redyellowbluemakeyou.blogspot.com/2010/11/some-more-rapid-sketches.html