Ai Weiwei

"An artwork unable to make people feel uncomfortable or to feel different is not one worth creating."

http://aiweiwei.com/ 

Rembrandt

'Rembrandt adopted this chiaroscuro technique early in his career, and for the rest of his life it was to be the main expressive vehicle of his work. He recognised in this shadowy light - in the deep well of a darkened interior or in a flickering mark of half-tones and reflections - the power of suggestion, of metaphor, the ability to create mood and to suggest realms of thought and feeling beyond the concrete surfaces of the material world. By cloaking his figures in a veil of shadows and half-lights, he created a shift of attention from the tangible world of perceived objects to the intangible one of spirit and feeling.'

from 'The History and Techniques of the Great Masters - Rembrandt' by Andrew Morrall, 1987, Chartwell Books.

from Robert Adamson, introduction to 'The Best Australian Poems 2009'. Black Inc.

' ... someone who has managed to come up with a voice that has a trace of the authentic about it. Not such an easy thing: it takes courage to be yourself, to write a poem about what you actually believe. This has to involve the ability to craft the language of the heart and soul into the right form.'

http://www.robertadamson.com/ 


https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/category/robert-adamson

Roland Barthes (translated by Richard Howard), 'The Semiotic Challenge', University of California Press, 1994

'The Kitchen of Meaning'

'A garment, an automobile, a dish of cooked food, a gesture, a film, a piece of music, an advertising image, a piece of furniture, a newspaper headline - these indeed appear to be heterogeneous objects.
     
What might they have in common? This at least: all are signs. When I walk down the streets - or through life - and encounter these objects, I apply to all of them, if need be without realising it, one and the same activity, which is that of a certain reading; modern man, urban man, spends his time reading. He reads, first of all and above all, images, gestures, behaviours ... Even with regard to written text, we are constantly given a second message to read between the lines of the first ...'

'To decipher the world's signs always means to struggle with a certain innocence of objects.' 

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/04/roland-barthes-myths-we-dont-outgrow.html 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/mar/26/roland-barthes-camera-lucida-rereading 

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/29/the-art-of-poetry-no-86-richard-howard 

Craig Powell, "Poetry on the Brain", Meanjin, December 2004

"In a paper called 'On Poetry and Weeping', I suggested that the child first forms a name for its mother when it begins to appreciate that the two of them have separate minds, different subjectivities. So that language itself arises from this sense of separateness and the loss of the primordial union. There is thus a basic sadness at the heart of words. Profound beauty can in itself bring us to tears. Music and poetry reach into that archaic level of experience between merger and separateness."

http://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/powell-craig 

http://meanjin.com.au/ 

Clarissa Pinkola Estes, "Women Who Run With The Wolves", Rider UK 1992

"Creating one thing at a certain point in the river feeds those who come to the river, feeds creatures far downstream, and yet others in the deep. Creativity is not a solitary movement. That is its power. Whatever is touched by it, whoever hears it, sees it, senses it, knows it, is fed. That is why beholding someone else's creative word, image, idea, fills us up, inspires us to our own creative work. A single creative act has the potential to feed a continent. One creative act can cause a torrent to break through stone." 

http://www.clarissapinkolaestes.com/