John Marin
April 7, 2008
John Marin 1870-1953 is recognized as the greatest American Modernist Artist. He is known for his abstracted landscapes and watercolors which seemed so far ahead of his time when they were painted. I love what he has to say about the artists process.
“You cannot create a work of art unless the things you behold respond to something within you”
“Using paint as paint is different from using paint to paint a picture”
“A work of art tells the story the best, it transcends the factual”
“Just put down a color that the paper will like, a color that looks alright in itself. If the paper likes it, it doesn’t matter if it’s not a transcript from nature”
“Some of the etchings I had been making before Stieglitz showed my work already had some freedom about them. I had already begun to let go some. After he began to show my work, I let go a lot more of course. But in the watercolors I had been making even before Stieglitz first saw my work, I had already begun to let go in complete freedom.”
