Robert Henri - "The Art Spirit"

Robert Henri - The Art Spirit

Let's get back to Henri's thinking today.  As an artist, I need to think about my plans for the new year and Robert Henri is just the one to "Kick me in the butt" and get me motivated.  I would love to have been able to attend his art classes, although I think he was a bit of a male chauvinist because he always refers to a "him" in his books.  I guess that era did not recognize women as artist so, I will let that one slide for him at the moment.

"The art student must master from the beginning; that is, he must be master of such as he has.  By being now master of such as he has there is promise that he will be master in the future.

A  work of art which inspires us comes from no quibbling or uncertain man.  It is the manifest of a very positive nature in great enjoyment, and at the very moment the work was done.

It is not enough to have thought great things before doing the work.  The brush stroke at the moment of contact carries inevitably the exact state of being of the artist at that exact moment into the work, and there it is, to be seen and read by those who can read such signs, and to be read later by the artist himself, with perhaps some surprise, as a revelation of himself." Robert Henri - The Art Spirit

People ... if you don't have this book I suggest you get it and read it again and again.  I always use his writings to inspire me to a new season of paintings.