Odilon Redon wrote:

"I address those who surrender docilely, without the help of sterile explanations, to the secret and mysterious laws of sensitivity and of the heart."

To Myself, Odilon Redon (1840-1916), published by George Braziller, Inc., New York, 1986.

Paintings by Odilon Redon (1840 - 1916); Music: "Canope" from "PrŽludes, livre 2" by Claude Debussy (1862 - 1918) performed by Gordon Fergus-Thompson. Video by HonestJago.

Pierre Bonnard (October 3, 1867 -- January 23, 1947) was a French painter and printmaker, a founding member of Les Nabis. Video by DistantMirrors.

Vincent Van Gogh's work set to the song "Vincent" by Don McLean. Part of an art and creative writing lesson plan for the patients at Mississippi State Hospital by Anthony DiFatta (video - tdifatta).

Sorry not to have been a teacher my dears, I don't think I ever had the emotional hardihood nor forbearance for it, besides which the need for solitude is immense, because everything matters so much, especially the little things.

But just in case you would like to know I should have told you the artists who have helped me most to stay alive and dare to carry on opening the shutters on my mind and letting the wind through. Be True. Trust. Open your heart and surrender.

They are Odilon Redon, Kathe Kollwitz and Marc Chagall; Bonnard, Mary Cassat, Raphael, Van Gogh, Fra Angelico, Renoir, William Turner, Georgia O'Keefe, Samuel Palmer and William Blake to name a few of the dearest souls who have left such illumination in their wake, for they open our hearts to promise of such echoing moments and breadths of being and awareness. Love and Beauty and Truth are best approached in a spirit of openness, for the scale that you encounter is immense, and the open heart has no trouble with pride to blind it to the rule of Love.

Soon I shall post my favourite pictures of theirs and tell you more about how wonderful they are. And before I go I learnt some of my best lessons simply by witnessing other artists at work, which is quite a privilege in some cases, because it is a private and deeply emotional matter for some. One of my best teachers in this respect was Leon Kossof, who I worked for as a model one summer and who addressed each new approach to the work in progress with considerably focussed emotional intensity.

But do also bear in mind that the artist's best friend is his pipe and his chair, as a French painter of battles, seraglios and shipwrecks once said, but I forget his name.

The work grows inside you in every cell of your body where there is always plenty of space and time tells the story if you can just keep the tools of your trade close at hand and let the work come through, let it speak, surrender.

Oh, and one last thing. Fashion and fame present a significant intrusion and distraction. The work itself is a thing of a lifetime, and provides in itself a bountiful sufficiency, and if you are lucky you will not be sidetracked by superficial things.

October 2008:

Sometimes it is like a tree of thoughts and reflections of thoughts and all supported and informed by the embracing air. Everything is related to this huge unfolding of events, and the part each of us plays in it matters. Indifference is betrayal.

November 2007: We might open our whole selves to the essence of wisdom and balance, to help bring light and understanding to the issues of our times through the great unconscious that we all share in our cultures and faiths that grow from the root of time, from the core of being, wrapping our thoughts in beautiful veils and immersing us in slow tides of understanding, that ebb and flow their currents of infinite expansion.

May 2005: This is how painting seems to me. Each painting has a life of its own, inhabiting the unconscious mind, the collective unconscious and possibly an infinite number of parallel universes. I work the brushes hard and fast as the picture unfolds. I cannot tell you what happens, the fullness of experience, being alive on the precipice of self, flying through memory and consciousness into an overpowering physical imperative, as though the painting grips your innards in its fist and twists them, pulling your mind right round to face it square on, nothing left in the world but this rushing forward, birds flying out of your navel.