During this entire voyage of mine on the Aegean I had sensed with profundity that the curtain is truly the picture. Alas for him who tips the curtain in order to see the picture. He will see nothing but chaos. I remained plunged in solitude’s austere silence for many additional days.
It was spring; I sat beneath the blossoming lemon tree in the courtyard, joyfully turning over in my mind a poem I had heard at Mount Athos: “Sister Almond Tree, speak to me of God.” And the almond tree blossomed.
Truly, the curtain embroidered with blossoms, birds, and men - this must be God. This world is not His vestment, as I once believed; it is God himself. Form and essence are identical. Nikos Kazantzakis
quotes "I get freer... I have this sort of feeling that I am all there now. It's not even thinking in terms of one's limitations, because they come naturally. I think whatever you have you can do wonders with it, if you accept it." Willem de Kooning, "What Abstract Art Means to Me" (1951)
"One piece of advice, don't copy nature too much. Art is an abstraction: derive this abstraction from nature while dreaming before it, but think more of creating than the actual result." Gauguin
"The artist expresses only what he has within himself, not what he sees with his eyes." Jawlensky
"I think of painting as possessed by a structure.. but a structure born of the flow of color feeling. Color in color is felt at any and every place of the pictorial organization; in its immediacy - its particularity. Color must be felt throughout." - Painting in Color, 1967, Jules Olitski
