Thou pourest thy Full Heart – in
Profuse strains of Unpremeditated Art²
The Artist should be all Impulse and Instinct
The Artist Creates proudly out of the Freedom³
And Power of their soul a living thing, New &
Soaring & Beautiful, Impalpable, Imperishable⁴
Maybe Art’s only purpose is to Preserve the Self⁵
The aim of an Artist is to Represent not the outward
Appearance of thing – but its Inward Significance⁶
The Artist’s Work is to Reveal & Celebrate the
Eternal, Purposeless background of human life⁷
What is Art – but Life upon the Larger scale⁸
We and Art are made for each other – and
Where that Bond Fails, human Life Fails⁹
Art is the Affirmation of life – and Life,
Or its Eternal evidence, is Everywhere¹⁰
¹ Denise Levertov, Misnomer
² Percy Bysshe Shelley, To a Skylark
³ Henry James, The Tree of Knowledge
⁴ James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
⁵ Terrance Hayes, Lighthead’s Guide to the Galaxy
⁶ Will Durant, paraphrasing Aristotle in The Story of Philosophy
⁷ Alan Watts, This Is It
⁸ Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh
⁹ Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince
¹⁰ Alfred Stieglitz