Diane P. Farr

Oil Paintings and Portraiture

 

 

    Favorite Quotes about Art & Life

"Beauty is ever present like the light of the sun, even in the most humble object, only it takes an artist's vision to detect it and an artist’s skill to reproduce it

Beauty is ever present like the light of the sun,
even in the most humble object,
only it takes and artist's vision to detect it
and an artist's skill to reproduce it.   
      ---Emil Carlsen

 

Everyone needs beauty as well as bread. 
        --- John Muir

 

 

"In a way, nobody sees a flower really, it is so small, we haven't time -- and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time."
--- Georgia O'Keefe

 

 

 from M. Kimmelman ('The Accidental Masterpiece:  On the Art of Life and Vice Versa'):

 

Creating, collecting, and even just appreciating art can make living a daily masterpiece.  I don’t mean that every day becomes perfect if we enjoy art… but everything, even the most ordinary daily affair, is enriched by the lessons that can be gleaned from art:  that beauty is often where you don’t expect to find it; that it is something we may discover and also invent, then reinvent, for ourselves;  that the most important things in the world are never as simple as they seem;  that the world is also richer when it declines to abide by comforting formulas; and that it is always good to keep your eyes wide open, because you never know what you will discover.    

 

Art has a special power to transcend the moment, and dissolves time by connecting us with what we cherish and deem longer lasting than ourselves...   Art provides us clues about how to live our lives more fully.

 

: more than 20,000 years old, drawing is older than writing as a human activity for expression. 

My paintings have nothing to do with nature. It's something to do with forever going...
the space behind the sky.. the space behind the shadow. 
                     ---- Ann Packard

 

 

 Opportunity is missed by most people  because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
--- Thomas  Edison

 

 

“To me, every square inch of light and space is a miracle.”
            --- Walt Whitman

 

At times our own light goes out
and is rekindled by a spark from another person.
Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude
of those who have lighted the flame within us.
       -- Albert Schweitzer

 

"[Society] admires instant brilliance, effortless brilliance.  I think quite the reverse. 
You should admire the person who perseveres and slogs through and gets there in the end." 
                ---   Sir James Dyson

 

To gain confidence, constant practice is essential.
Just as a musician needs to practice regularly to retain his touch,
the painter needs to be constantly in touch with the medium.
---Robert Lovett

 

 

I find working with paint meditative, almost therapeutic.
I can leave the world behind, and focus...
The simplicity of form, the drama of rich, intense colour,
the joy of challenge, and the challenge of endurance...
The piece, when it is over, is not what is made, but how it is made.
                    ---  A. Kuntz

 

 

Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.
                 ---  Winston Churchill

 

The life so short,
the craft so long to learn. 
----  Chaucer

There are painters who transform
the sun to a yellow spot,
but there are others who
with the help of their art and their intelligence,
transform a yellow spot into the sun.
  --  Pablo Picasso