Susan Vreeland
Susan Vreeland
Susan Vreeland is an American author. Several of her books deal with the relationship between art and fiction. The Passion of Artemisia is a fictionalised investigation of some aspects of the life of Artemisia Gentileschi, while The Girl in Hyacinth Blue centres round an imaginary painting by Vermeer. The Forest Lover is a fictionalised account of the life of the Canadian painter Emily Carr...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth20 January 1946
CountryUnited States of America
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The idea of being close to where pigments were mined - that's the first thing in making a painting, getting the material. And what's the last thing you do in making a painting? You put a frame around it.
argue covered flat landscape liquid viewed willing
Landscape is more than flat land covered by floodwater, the seeping of peat bogs, a river of liquid pewter viewed from a sentry tower. It's an influence on what a person values, what she is willing to sacrifice or argue for.
allow characters historical history intimate invented published realm record relationships reveal subject
Archival and published history does not always record personal relationships of historical figures, so characters must be invented to allow the subject to reveal their interior realm through intimate interaction.
philosophy moving eye
You know, bicycling isn't just a matter of balance," I said. "it's a matter of faith. You can keep upright only by moving forward. You have to have your eyes on the goal, not the ground. I'm going to call that the Bicyclist's Philosophy of Life.
kissing texture joints
It was strange: When you reduced even a fledgling love affair to its essentials--I loved her, she maybe loved me, I was foolish, I suffered--it became vacuous and trite, meaningless to anyone else. In the end, it's only the moments that we have, the kiss on the palm, the joint wonder at the furrowed texture of a fir trunk or at the infinitude of grains of sand in a dune. Only the moments.
heart humble museums
That a thing made by hand, the work and thought of a single craftsman, can endure much longer than its maker, through centuries in fact, can survive natural catastrophe, neglect, and even mistreatment, has always filled me with wonder. Sometimes in museums, looking at a humble piece of pottery from ancient Persia or Pompeii, or a finely wrought page from a medieval illuminated manuscript toiled over by a nameless monk, or a primitive tool with a carved handle, I am moved to tears. The unknown life of the maker is evanescent in its brevity, but the work of his or her hands and heart remains.
world
What the world calls failure, I call learning.
determination fate men
I remember being disappointed when Papa had shown me Caravaggio's Judith. She was completely passive while she was sawing through a man's neck. Caravaggio gave all the feeling to the man. Apparently, he couldn't imagine a woman to have a single thought. I wanted to paint her thoughts, if such a thing were possible -- determination and concentration and belief in the absolute necessity of the act. The fate of her people resting on her shoulders...
long looks enough
Look long enough, out or in, and you’ll be glad you are who you are.
spiritual loving-life debt
God taking from us and loving us at the same time by providing comforters was a kind of spiritual equanimity. It seemed a phenomenon of life how a death insinuates us into the debt of those who stand by us in trouble and console us.
across churches united
When I see Tiffany windows in churches across the United States, I get a sense of spiritual upliftment from that.
art civil domestic forms human isolated literature peace tragic turn
Where there is no human connection, there is no compassion. Without compassion, then community, commitment, loving-kindness, human understanding, and peace all shrivel. Individuals become isolated, the isolated turn cruel, and the tragic hovers in the forms of domestic and civil violence. Art and literature are antidotes to that.
appeared brush great guided hand landscape lily magic mix page small taught until watercolor
When I was nine, my great grandfather, a landscape painter, taught me to mix colors. With his strong hand surrounding my small one, he guided the brush until a calla lily appeared as if by magic on a page of textured watercolor paper.
developing mixed quality soup writers
Writers have to be observant. Every nuance, every inflection in a voice, the quality of air, even - they all get mixed up in this soup of the story developing in our minds.