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I wake up in my cave, with memories of my dreams spilling into my daily life.  My cave is filled with routines, obligations, work and domestic duties.  My reality is a dim reflection of what I wanted to accomplish in life.  The idealism of my youth was a dream prompted by my desire to leave my cave for brief moments while I wandered the authentic world and paused to paint what I saw there.  

Ken Nakamura

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Paradoxes

  • "The partial becomes complete; the crooked straight; the empty, full; the worn out, new.  He whose (desires) are few gets them; he whose (desires) are many goes astray." (Chapter 22), Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching

  • “Quiet the mind and the soul will speak.”  “Learn this from water: loud splashes the brook but the oceans depth are calm.”  “You will not be punished for your anger; you will be punished by your anger.”  Gautama Buddha

  • What the superior man seeks is in himself; what the small man seeks is in others. Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves. Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance." Analects of Confucius

  • “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. " The Sermon on the Mount, Jesus

  • "I know that I know nothing", Plato's Socrates, paraphrased from his Apology

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Pardoxes in Art, Beauty and Creativity

  • "All in the world know the beauty of the beautiful, and in doing this they have (the idea of) what ugliness is; they all know the skill of the skillful, and in doing this they have (the idea of) what the want of skill is. (Chapter 2) Lao Tsu,Tao Te Ching.

  • "Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees."  Confucius, The Analects of Confucius.

  • "Why does the eye see more clearly when asleep than the imagination when awake?" Leonardo DaVinci

  •  “Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.  Good artists copy; great artists steal...The first half of life is learning to be an adult; the second half is learning to be a child”.  Pablo Picasso

  • "Is beautiful what proceeds from an inner necessity of the soul. Is beautiful what is inwardly beautiful. Imagination is what allows your mind discover. All methods are sacred if they are internally necessary."  Wassily Kandinsky

  • "Art does not reproduce what we see, rather it makes us see. Art does not reproduce the visible; it makes visible."  Paul Klee

  • "Genius worship is the inevitable sign of an uncreative age." Clive Bell

  • “You need to let the little things that would ordinarily bore you suddenly thrill you.  “The idea is not to live forever; it is to create something that will.” Andy Warhol

  • “Living is more a question of what one spends than what one makes.  The artist creates only one part of the creative process.  The onlooker completes and it is the onlooker who has the last word."  Marcel Duchamp

 

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