I’ve always thought, you can not teach the art part of art, you can’t do it because you can’t even talk about it. So one way of guiding young artists is to just surround them with intense art, deep art, meaningful art, from the past, from contemporary times, whatever it is, from films, from books, from anywhere.
— Bill Jensen
This quote (and the following photo) comes from an excellent piece in the Brooklyn Rail about abstract expressionist painter Bill Jensen.
Here’s another intriguing quote from Jensen: “A very important concept in Chinese paintings is emptiness and fullness. With my work I don’t know if darkness is empty or lightness is empty. It could also be that either darkness or lightness is full, because in Chinese philosophy, emptiness is not what we think of as emptiness. It is the place where everything will be going and then will be reborn. “
Mandate of Heaven, by Bill Jensen. Oil on linen, triptych, 2010-11.
Exiled Stardust 