A Quote by Keith Carter

The full weight and mystery of your art rests upon your relationship to your subject matter. — © Keith Carter
The full weight and mystery of your art rests upon your relationship to your subject matter.
Literature and art are one of a number of relationships I have with the world. Like you have relationships with your friends and a relationship with your lover and your relationship with your family and your relationship with your work - sometimes it's really great; sometimes it's non-existent, sometimes it's fruitful.
Often I feel I go to some distant region of the world to be reminded of who I really am. There is no mystery about why this should be so. Stripped of your ordinary surroundings, your friends, your daily routines, your refrigerator full of your food, your closet full of your clothes -- with all this taken away, you are forced into direct experience. Such direct experience inevitably makes you aware of who it is that is having the experience. That's not always comfortable, but it is always invigorating.
Your relationship with love is your relationship with the essence of who you are. It affects your relationship with your body, and your relationship with food. When you realize that you are a spirit and that this body is a temple, then you want to treat it well.
In a movie, a book, or a play, a character doesn't live in a vacuum. She is subject to pressures from the world outside of her, just like we are in life. These pressures and circumstances shape character. Who your parents are determines your genetic make up: your skin color, your sex, your height, weight. Where you are raised does affect your worldview either positively or negatively, your accent. Your economic class affects where you go to school, what you eat, where you sleep.
That is the thing about being a writer; your subject matter may not stay your subject matter if you break their trust by revealing personal and editorialized information about them.
Your eloquence should be the servant of the ideas in your head. Your rule might be this: If a sentence, no matter how excellent, does not illuminate your subject in some new and useful way, scratch it out.
Seeing, in the finest and broadest sense, means using your senses, your intellect, and your emotions. It means encountering your subject matter with your whole being. It means looking beyond the labels of things and discovering the remarkable world around you.
No matter what your age or your life path, whether making art is your career or your hobby or your dream, it is not too late or too egotistical or too selfish or too silly to work on your creativity.
When you're working and you're busy and you're successful, no matter what, something suffers, whether it's your relationship with your mother, your relationship with your whole family. Certain things suffer and take the back burner, not because they're on the back burner in your heart but because the world just moves so quickly. A lot of people, when they're chasing their dreams, they have to leave people they love.
You must forget all your theories, all your ideas before the subject. What part of these is really your own will be expressed in your expression of the emotion awakened in you by the subject.
Don’t go searching for a subject, let your subject find you. You can’t rush inspiration. … Once your subject finds you, it’s like falling in love. It will be your constant companion. Shadowing you, peeping in your windows, calling you at all hours to leave messages like, Only you understand me.
Don't worry about finding your bliss right now. Not even our President knew what his bliss was, nor did I. One of these days to your own surprise, your bliss will find you. But no matter what you do, participate, be there, full force, full heart, full steam ahead.
There has never been a merging of two lives where significant problems of daily living did not occur. One way or another, your relationship is going to be affected. The only question is how. There's a big difference between knowing and doing. It's not what happens between partners that determines the outcome of a relationship, it's how they handle what happens. If all you deal with in your relationship is problems, then you will have a problem relationship. If you want your pound of flesh with full acknowledgement that you're right, your future will be dim.
In love, treat your relationship as if you are growing the most beautiful flower. Keep watering it, tend to its roots, give it lots of sunlight, and always make sure the petals are full of color and are never curling. Once you neglect your plant, it will die, as will your relationship.
It seems to me that awakening to the full potential of what your life might be - beyond the possibilities of your own family, your own class, your own race, your own neighborhood - that is one of the great gifts that art affords.
Abstract understanding doesn't mean arbitrary sloshing and messing. Abstract art is controlled visual magic based on laws and methodology. Abstraction generally involves implication, suggestion and mystery rather that obvious description. Like a good poem, a good abstraction attacks your feelings before your understanding. Abstraction within realism adds zest and excitement to otherwise dull subject matter. Abstract understanding takes time and patience.
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