Often I have felt, intuitively, the truth of this statement from The World View of Paul Cezanne by Jane Roberts and I’ll be thinking about this when of view Paul Cezanne’s motifs in Aix and walk around Paris.  This excerpt is from two passages dictated by Paul Cezanne’s World View, posthumously:

“..Studying nature carefully, I have come nowhere near learning more about these other organizations, for my intellect and educated eye still structure the visual world.  Yet in fields particularly, I have sensed waves, usually invisible, that seem to flow between objects, through them, uniting them in a different way; making what I call invisible shapes - because while I almost see them, I did not actually visually perceive them.  I have tried to s suggest this phenomenon, both in painting rocks and fields, and in the folds of cloth where suggested shapes, if treated like objects, would surely appear to be solid.”

Entry 18 - page 113 - January 12, 1976 - excerpted from from The World View of Paul Cezanne by Jane Roberts 

“….Sometimes I think that the earth retains ghost images of all the natural shapes that it has known, so that a given field may also contain pseudo-shapes - the forms of mountains or seas that once covered it in other times.  Unknowingly, a painter may give a field a wavelike cast, so that the grasses suggest seas, and never know why he has done so.   Perhaps there are indeed sights to paint that we do not see, hidden within the forms that are apparent; pictures within pictures.  I often study nature with this in mind.

“….Nor can he escape nature, even in his studio, for his feelings will be affected by the weather even though the drapes be closed, and those emotions and connections will seep into his decisions about his work, even if he never goes outside.  Artists with a constant eye out for the academies or for sales have a tendency to ignore their own feelings and knowledge by trying to superimposed values of a social nature.  They force their emotions into stereotyped images, conforming more to the restricting conventions of drawing rooms, where even language itself is stiff as stone.”

“….Paintings, then, are natural formations, rising up or emerging from a man’s psyche as surely as mountains thrust up from the ground.   A man himself has “natural features” so that his emotions, intellect, dreams and accomplishments can be compared to the different objective features of the land.  Actually, the painter merges the inner landscape of the mind with the exterior one.  Literally his dreams take shape.”

Entry 21 - page 126 - March 24, 1976 - excerpted from from The World View of Paul Cezanne by Jane Roberts 

Actually, I think a lot of my own dry spells and of other artists who I admire, who routinely have them.   I think about the emptiness I feel sometimes, now especially, as a way of creating space within to be filled by what is coming next.

Not that “what comes next” is what I expect it to be - life is never exactly what it is expected to be - maybe it will even be better than I expect - but if it’s not - I can accept that too.

What’s clear to me - the path of Art is one that has high points (of productivity - of direct inspiration) and indirect activity and indirect inspiration - that may seem like inactivity -but it’s really not - it’s just the readiness for the next peak.

Develop that idea.  I’ll let you all know how it goes while I’m walking around Paris and Aix this week.