Quotes from Anna Held Audette

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.