Struggle

Three quotes for tonight, as I work on my quilt:

When I am halfway there with a painting, it can occasionally be thrilling… But it happens very rarely; usually it’s agony… I go to great pains to mask the agony. But the struggle is there. It’s the invisible enemy. (Richard Diebenkorn)

You should see me when they [the paintings] don’t work out. I won’t leave until I can get them to a point. Sometimes it’s a struggle, and I’m sweating, I break out in sweat. This whole idea of the euphoric artist in the studio… painting can be that, but it sometimes isn’t, it’s a lot of work. (Ross Penhall)

In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had five hundred years of democracy and peace and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock. (Orson Welles)