Art arises from one's depths or it is not art but kitsch! Art, for me, is and was my digging tool for Meaning, for Truth...my own Truth that may speak to your Truth.
      - Frederick Franck, from the booklet Pacem In Terris, describing the  peace gardens he created with his wife Claske: "a sacred place that speaks to the sacred space at the core of the human heart." Franck is perhaps best known for his books on drawing including Zen Seeing, Zen Drawing.

Nancy Middleton: I love that James Baldwin quote you cited during your talk:  “You don’t get the book you want. You get the book you get.” You spoke about finding the passionate author of a piece.

A.J. Verdelle: Yes. Where’s the juice? What’s happening here? What’s good? What is my favorite thing? Having looked this over again and knowing that this is now some sort of story, in whatever shape it’s in, what part of it would I not relinquish in any way? This is why my story kept changing, I think.

So I wrote the whole thing about Margarete, and it was not good. It was not what I wanted. And I didn’t know what I was going to do. I had wasted, in my mind, a lot of time. So that was tough. But I kept going. This is another thing that I try to talk to people about: understanding that line of observation. Just because you observe something doesn’t make it deep. Just because I knew it was wrong doesn’t make that the deep thing. The deep thing is the story that is still waiting for my attention. So until I figured out what to do, I had to keep working. . .
- A.J. Verdelle (author of The Good Negress) interviewed by Nancy Middleton in Glimmer Train (Fall 1998)

. . .

One of the most challenging, and most rewarding, aspects of creating art as a primary purpose in one's life, is the constant search for what's deeper.

What's the story under the story under the story? That's where the juice is.

. . .

Note on the painting, La Verendrye Nightfall. When I was thirteen and fourteen, I went on wilderness canoe trips with the YMCA in La Verendrye Park in northern Quebec. It was a place of great beauty and mystery to me, of miles of rapids, of remote Cree Indian villages and lake after uninhabited lake. This painting is from a dream I recently had of that time in my life.