I am reading this wonderful book called "The Art Spirit" by Robert Henry. He was a teacher at the Art Students League and this book compiles inspirational lectures that he gave to his students. His influence on American art was profound. He sought to instill in his students a passion for art, received from direct experience of life.
Today's art thought is from a lecture he gave about the artist Mary Rogers. The thoughts are expressed in it are the reasons, that make me feel the calling of art - why there is nothing else that I would rather be doing.
Mary Roger's approach to nature was a purely spiritual one. Her technique in every instance was invoked by the spirit of things that she wished to express.
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 wisdom.
It is in the nature of all people to have these experiences; but in our time and under the conditions of our lives, it is only a rare few who are able to continue in the experience and find expression for it.
At such times there is a song going on within us, a song to which we should 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 own 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 with the commonplace - and we fall back and become our common selves. Yet we live in the memory of those songs which in moments of 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.
Mary Rogers was one of those who had the simple power to listen to the song and to create under the spell of it. She knew the value of revelation and her spirit had that control over mentality which was the secret of her gift for employing at all times in her work that specific technique evoked by the song. She was master. Her work is a clear record of her life's great moments.
