trust and just go with the flow
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I'm very involved in my religion, and one of the things that I'm most concerned about is trusting God above all else. We have so many times when something comes along and it tries to shake that trust just a little bit. And a painting is very much like any experience that comes into life where you have to trust and just go with the flow, go with the right ideas, go with what you know is the right way to think, is the right way to act, and just trust that the thing's going to work out. It's easier in painting than it is in living, I have to say!
something good
listen (53 sec./367KB)
Everything you do, it's based on how much you believe. It's the proof! The product is the proof of how deep your beliefs were. Sure, you have doubts. Your question's part of your critical dimension to doubt something. But if the doubts become stronger than your belief, you won't do it! You won't do it. And it takes a lot of courage to transcend that sometimes.
But don't let me, please, lose sight of the belief that ultimately there is something good that's going to come out of this. And good is not defined here necessarily as something that may be pleasant, but it's just somehow a part of me. And it's a piece of me that if I don't manifest it in a tangible form, nobody will ever see it, so they won't be able to learn from me the way I have learned from all those who have gone before me, and on whose shoulders I am now standing.
everybody needs beauty
listen (46 sec./316KB)
Everybody needs beauty in their lives. Everybody needs to be able to express something in their lives. And everybody has a spirit in them that needs to be touched, and it's part of our being a human being. That's something that people forget about. I get very upset with people when they're talking about education, and they only talk about the mechanics of educationteaching them to be good workers. Okay, work is an important part of your life. You've got to be able to work. But, you have to have something that relates to beauty and to things of the spirit to be a real human being. And I'm not just saying my kind of art. I mean, that's the artsmusic, plays, poetry, literature. We need these things to be complete human beings.