Robert Henri on what motivates the masters of all art

Heron Dance Poster Series

I’m working on a series of posters. The one above is a first draft of one the funkier ones. Feedback welcome and appreciated. I plan to post the first series this weekend. There will be two available sizes: 36 x 24 inches and 18 by 12 inches, so the text will be easier to read than it is above.

This first poster is inspired in part by the following excerpt from Robert Henri’s classic on what it means to live life centered around creating art, The Art Spirit.

There are moments in our lives, there are moments in a day, when we seem to see beyond the usual—become clairvoyant. We reach then into reality. Such are the moments of our greatest happiness. Such are the moments of our greatest vision. At such times, there is a song going on within us, a song to which we listen. It fills us with surprise. We marvel at it. We would continue to hear it. But few are capable of holding themselves in the state of listening to their song. Intellectuality steps in, and as the song within us is of the utmost sensitiveness, it retires in the presence of the cold, material intellect. It is aristocratic and will not associate itself with the commonplace—and we fall back and become our ordinary selves. Yet we live in the memory of these songs, which in moments of intellectual inadvertence have been possible to us. They are the pinnacles of our experience, and it is the desire to express these intimate sensations, this song from within, which motivates the masters of all art.