Living Color Quotes

“...we live on the edge of the abstract all the time. Look at something solid in the known world: an automobile. Separate the fender, the hood, the roof, lie them on the garage floor, walk around them. Let go of the urge to reassemble the care or to pronounce fender, hood, roof. Look at them as curve, line, form. Relax the mind. Don't immediately try to make meaning or be practical. Truthfully, how practical is life anyway? All our work, and death is the final result? So let's enjoy the unfolding shape, the elemental, organic delight and agony of it all.”
― Natalie Goldberg, Living Color: Painting, Writing, and the Bones of Seeing

“... I think I intuitively suspected that perspective would put me outside the painting. I didn't want that. I wanted to get close to those tables and chairs, to jump in and feel myself dancing with them, even as I sat drawing them. I didn't want things to lie down; I wanted them to come forward, to beckon and call, to be noticed on the paper as I was noticing them in real life. I wanted the viewer to have a direct connection with the objects, to feel as happy as I was in their presence.”
― Natalie Goldberg, Living Color: Painting, Writing, and the Bones of Seeing

“When you draw and pay attention to what is, it's a form of being present. This inspires the mind, makes it happy, and the heart wants to express more.”
― Natalie Goldberg, Living Color: Painting, Writing, and the Bones of Seeing

“I remember learning one-point perspective in seventh grade in the one art class I took. The guide lines had to be made just so, and we used rulers as we did in math class. I did everything the teacher said and”
― Natalie Goldberg, Living Color: Painting, Writing, and the Bones of Seeing

“This kind of balance was more natural to me than perspective. Perspective is a way to make objects “lie down” in a painting. In the Western world, we have a notion that things recede and converge as they go farther away. You’re supposed to draw them smaller and at a certain”
― Natalie Goldberg, Living Color: Painting, Writing, and the Bones of Seeing