Simplicity Is The Goal, Not The Starting Point

Osprey Fishing. The image above is an example of a two-page spread of a book to be published in 2025:
Creativity as a Way of Life: Journal Meditations of a Working Artist

The more experience a person has, the more simplicity is profound.
   - Keith Jarrett, improvisational pianist 

I have started the chapters you are about to read four or five times over.  I have written and rewritten them from start to finish.  Henri Matisse, according to a friend of mine who once sat for him, used to begin his drawings ten times over, throwing them into the wastepaper basket day after day, and only keeping the last in which he thought he had achieved purity and simplicity of line.  Sadly, I am not Matisse.  And I am not at all sure that my final version is the clearest, or the closest to what I think, or am trying to think.  I console myself with a remark by the English historian Frederick W. Maitland (1887) that “simplicity is the outcome of technical subtlety; it is the goal, not starting point”.

- Fernand Braudel in The Wheels of Commerce, Civilization & Capitalism --15th-18th Century.  From the Foreword.

The life of simplicity is simple, but it opens to us a book in which we never get beyond the first syllable.
  - Dag Hammarskjöld

If you are not subscribed to either or both Heron Dance Art Studio Substacks, you can do that here:

  • Creativity as a Way of Life: The use of journaling as a tool in creative work; an exploration of the inner work underlying creative work.

  • A Pause for Beauty: a gratitude art journal celebrating the beauty and mystery of the natural world, and the gift of life.

    . . .

If you appreciate this work and can afford to support it, please do. October 1 it will become a paid Substack:

  • $5 a month

  • $50 a year

  • $150 Founding Membership includes both Substacks and two upcoming books:

  • Meditations on the Beauty and Mystery of Life, A Gratitude Journal

  • Using An Art Journal to Probe Deep.

    . . .

    The cost of subscribing to both of my Substacks,
    A Pause for Beauty and Creativity as a Way of Life
    is twice that indicated above.

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Any contributions received prior to October 1 will be credited against a subscription.

And thank you.

Recent Projects And Random Thoughts

  • The new art journal, Nurturing The Song Within, explores the inner work that underlies creative work, and creating a unique life.

If you are not subscribed to either or both Heron Dance Art Studio Substacks, you can do that here:

Below, two sample pages from my recent art journal, and the related diary/planner
Nurturing The Song Within