Category: Painting

The Man of Faith Steps In and Does Something

Close up of a sunflower

“I tell you, if one wants to be active, one mustn’t be afraid to do something wrong sometimes, not afraid to lapse into some mistakes. To be good — many people think that they’ll achieve it by doing no harm — and that’s a lie, and you said yourself in the past that it was a lie. That leads to stagnation, to mediocrity…

You don’t know how paralyzing it is, that stare from a blank canvas that says to the painter, “You can’t do anything.” The canvas has an idiotic stare, and mesmerizes some painters so that they turn into idiots themselves. Many painters are afraid of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas is afraid of the truly passionate painter who dares — and who has once broken the spell of “You can’t.”

Life itself likewise always turns towards one an infinitely meaningless, discouraging, dispiriting blank side on which there is nothing, any more than on a blank canvas. But however meaningless and vain, however dead life appears, the man of faith, of energy, of warmth, and who knows something, doesn’t let himself be fobbed off like that. He steps in and does something...”

The Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh (1853 – 1890) on taking action, from Ever Yours: The Essential Letters


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Orhan Pamuk on Painting

Photo © Mihaela Limberea

Painting is the silence of thought and the music of sight. Orhan Pamuk, “My Name Is Red”

Orhan Pamuk is one of the most prominent Turkish novelists and recipient of the first Nobel Prize to be awarded to a Turkish citizen in 2006.

Orhan Pamuk – My Name is Red