The Blank Canvas Quotes

“So rescue yourself from these general themes and write about what your everyday life offers you; describe your sorrows and desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind and your belief in some kind of beauty—describe all these with heartfelt, silent, humble sincerity and, when you express yourself, use the Things around you, the images from your dreams, and the objects you remember.”
― Anna Held Audette, The Blank Canvas: Inviting the Muse

“automatically. What are the characteristics of your surroundings, and which of these are significant to you? Are there certain views across some lawns, over some factories, or down a street that you habitually look at? Do they elicit pleasure, revulsion, or depression? Or are you intrigued by more abstract responses, such as color relationships, repetitive patterns, or sequences of overlapping forms? What time of day is it? Or doesn’t that matter? (See fig. 14.) What is your viewpoint? Are you observing your subject from below some high cliffs, or are you standing on an elevated subway platform? Do you see ten miles of verdant farmland, a gas station, or a piece of newspaper caught between trash cans by the curb? How much of the view should you include? Here you have to employ another example of editing. To draw everything indiscriminately may be too complicated or too boring, or both. If you’re in doubt about where to set the limits of your composition, use an empty 35mm slide frame. By moving it around and holding it at varying distances from your eye, you can isolate the section of what you’re looking at that interests you the most.”
― Anna Held Audette, The Blank Canvas: Inviting the Muse

“What aspects of the room have meaning for you? Do you have special feelings about a certain chair you prefer or associate with someone you care for, or dislike? (See fig. 13.) Is it something about the relationships between pieces of furniture, crowded or widely spaced, baroque alongside plain, the character of the curtains or the rug? Perhaps the important qualities are more abstract: the color of the light at a certain time of day or the geometry of the windows and doors.”
― Anna Held Audette, The Blank Canvas: Inviting the Muse

“In addition, you can be sure your drawing of your surroundings will have a modest degree of originality. After all, nobody else ever made a sketch of the dishes in your sink. That you probably can’t think of a similar image is also helpful.”
― Anna Held Audette, The Blank Canvas: Inviting the Muse

“a predetermined idea of the outcome. And if you don’t know how your drawing will (or should) appear, you will be forced to observe with more concentration. Finally, your drawing will have a contemporary quality because it is most certainly of your time. One of the many problems with traditional still-life concepts is that they are felt to be based on some vague historical aesthetic and, as in all noncreative revivals, are irrelevant to contemporary art.”
― Anna Held Audette, The Blank Canvas: Inviting the Muse

“After all, nobody else ever made a sketch of the dishes in your sink. That you probably can’t think of a similar image is also helpful.”
― Anna Held Audette, The Blank Canvas: Inviting the Muse

“First of all, keep in mind that thinking about what you’re going to do is a way of stalling. If you really could imagine what would happen when you made an image, there would be no need to do it. Even trying to imagine what a finished work of art will look like will probably lead to expectations that will be let down by the real experience. Making art is not solely an act of will. Rather it’s the outcome of a dialogue between artists and their art.”
― Anna Held Audette, The Blank Canvas: Inviting the Muse

“Many artists find that a forced separation from their studio caused by events like sickness, vacation, or a move makes it hard to begin again.”
― Anna Held Audette, The Blank Canvas: Inviting the Muse

“You get so close to, and so wound up in, what you are trying to do that you can lose perspective. Your mind may trick you into seeing what you want to see, not what is really there.”
― Anna Held Audette, The Blank Canvas: Inviting the Muse