in addition to painting, pfc includes ongoing correspondence. a selection of these writings is presented.
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Art is as good an index to the spiritual state of this age as of another; and in the effort of artists to free painting from the clinging conventions of the near past, and to use it as a means only to the most sublime emotions, we may read signs of an age possessed of a new sense of values and eager to turn that possession to account. It is impossible to visit a good modern exhibition without feeling that we are back in a world not altogether unworthy to be compared with that which produced primitive art. Here are [people] who take art seriously. Perhaps they take life seriously too, but if so, that is only because there are things in life (aesthetic ecstasy, for instance) worth taking seriously. In life, they can distinguish between the wood and the few fine trees. As for art, they know that it is something more important than a criticism of life; they will not pretend that it is a traffic in amenities; they know that it is a spiritual necessity. They are not making handsome furniture, nor pretty knick-knacks, nor tasteful souvenirs; they are creating forms that stir our most wonderful emotions.
—Clive Bell
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a welcomed immersion. the joy of waking up to a new day with paint on my hands is thunderclap.
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here begins the continuation of language as filtered through the visual deep sea dive.
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Once you label me you negate me.
—Søren Kierkegaard
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most of the pfc imagery is suggestive and not immediately nameable (label free). allows the mind to search and float in possibility.
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beauty abounds
in plenty
in dream
in intention
in work
in play
in the dance of the
follow
and lead
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the ways and movements of pfc (mix and match words): suggestive, suggestion, projective, projection, intentional, intention, abstract-formationism, formative-abstraction, e/motion, e/motional, spiritual, spirited, somadelic…
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some call to eat paint
some need kisses
some just want to be
asked heartfelt
and they will grant you
3 wishes
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signing/branding art. hystory/roots of this practice. at present would seem to be about ego of artist, buyer—can distract from image and experience. the artwork itself is the signature.
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pfc needs to feed
giving by giving
pass to pass
the beginning lasts
we will know the middle
when we get half way thru
124 or 62
all based in the 9
color field line
brush stroke by brush stroke
subtractions are additions
just as thoughts are actions
do everything for spiritual
satisfaction
i can't get no
no devo
on the radio
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The hypothesis that significant form is the essential quality in a work of art has at least one merit denied to many more famous and more striking—it does help to explain things. We are all familiar with pictures that interest us and excite our admiration, but do not move us as works of art. To this class belongs what I call "Descriptive Painting"—that is, painting in which forms are used not as objects of emotion, but as means of suggesting emotion or conveying information. Portraits of psychological and historical value, topographical works, pictures that tell stories and suggest situations, illustrations of all sorts, belong to this class. That we all recognise the distinction is clear, for who has not said that such and such a drawing was excellent as illustration, but as a work of art worthless? Of course many descriptive pictures possess, amongst other qualities, formal significance, and are therefore works of art: but many more do not. They interest us; they may move us too in a hundred different ways, but they do not move us aesthetically. According to my hypothesis they are not works of art. They leave untouched our aesthetic emotions because it is not their forms but the ideas or information suggested or conveyed by their forms that affect us.
—Clive Bell
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painting is like conversation. in conversation there can be direct answers or through round about concepts a trigger during interaction. the participants are left with something to carry away—a seed perhaps instead of a fully grown idea. there is room left for the listener or the viewer to carry his/her own interpretation to where it needs—but the painter or speaker has left all energetic applications on the table. thus to further ♬.
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Men and women who have been thrilled by the pure aesthetic significance of a work of art go away into the outer world in a state of excitement and exaltation which makes them more sensitive to all that is going forward about them. Thus, they realise with a heightened intensity the significance and possibility of life. It is not surprising that they should read this new sense of life into that which gave it. Not in the least; and I shall not quarrel with them for doing so. It is far more important to be moved by art than to know precisely what it is that moves. I should just like to remind them, though, that if art were no more than they sometimes fancy it to be, art would not move them as it does. If art were a mere matter of suggesting the emotions of life a work of art would give to each no more than what each brought with him. It is because art adds something new to our emotional experience, something that comes not from human life but from pure form, that it stirs us so deeply and so mysteriously.
—Clive Bell
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o say can you see
o say can you feel
o say spin magic
o say don’t say
pray
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The larger emotional life, or inner social impulse emanates from those pioneers who, living beyond existing conditions, are the dynamics of society. Through them life pushes onward. The inner impulse becomes public opinion, public opinion becomes custom, custom crystallizes into law. Now the fresh impulse is needed for new growth; where shall it be sought if not in the expression of the emotional life? What form shall the expression take unless it be the purest and most spontaneous form of art, which is without purpose other than the expression of an impulse? This alone fosters the growth of the emotions.
—Anny Mali Hicks