Copying opens your eyes to new possibilities, and new techniques… but trying to fob it off as your own is quite another matter…

Louise Bunn

Be like a rose – beautiful to those who appreciate your talents and a prick to those who don’t…

David Allio

David Allio is an international award-winning photojournalist and visual artist. His professional portfolio ranges from sports, editorial and corporate to glamour, fine art and portraiture. Since 1974, his unique photographs have appeared on album covers, postcards, posters, billboards, calendars, display advertising and in movies, books, catalogs, magazines and other periodicals. Outside North America, Allio is best known and honored as an accomplished traditional and contemporary nude figure artist. In North America, he is better-known as a professional photojournalist defined by his vivid editorial and feature images.

http://www.davidallio.com/aboutdfa.htm

Don’t plan, prepare…

Darby Bannard

Untitled 1962

Walter Darby Bannard (born September 23, 1934 in New Haven, CT), also known as Darby Bannard, is an American abstract painter.

Bannard attended Phillips Exeter Academy and Princeton University, where he struck up a friendship and working relationship with Frank Stella, which continued after graduation and eventuated in the extreme minimalism both artists engaged in around 1959 and thereafter. The first paintings from the 1959-1965 period contained few forms, as little as a single band painted around a field of color, and then developed into somewhat more complex geometric forms by the mid-60s. In the late 60s the forms dissolved into pale, atmospheric fields of color applied with rollers and paint-soaked rags. He was associated with Lyrical Abstraction, Minimalism, Formalism (art), Post-painterly Abstraction and Color Field painting.

He began using the new acrylic mediums in 1970 and his paintings evolved into colorful expanses of richly colored gels and polymers applied with squeegees and commercial floor brooms, which continues to the present.

Bannard was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1968.

Bannard’s first solo show was at the Tibor de Nagy gallery in January, 1965 and he had exhibitions there until 1970. He began showing at the Lawrence Rubin Gallery, and then in 1974 at the Knoedler Contemporary Gallery, where he showed for the next 15 years. Currently he shows at the Loretta Howard Gallery in New York City and the Center for Visual Communication in Miami, Florida. He has exhibited in numerous museums and galleries nationally and internationally to the present day.

Bannard has had close to a hundred solo exhibitions, been in several hundred group shows and is represented in the collections of all the major New York museums and many others around the world. He is a prolific writer on art with over a hundred published essays and reviews; Bannard has taught, lectured and participated in panel discussions, and has been a Co-chair of the International Exhibitions Committee of the National Endowment for the Arts. He curated and wrote the catalog for the first comprehensive retrospective exhibition of the paintings of Hans Hofmann, at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C.

Currently Bannard is Professor and Head of Painting of the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Miami.

Speak softly, but carry a big can of paint….

Banksy

Banksy is an anonymous British graffiti artist, political activist, film director and painter. His satirical street art and subversive epigrams combine irreverent dark humour with graffiti done in a distinctive stencilling technique. Such artistic works of political and social commentary have been featured on streets, walls, and bridges of cities throughout the world.
Banksy’s work was born out of the Bristol underground scene which involved collaborations between artists and musicians. According to author and graphic designer Tristan Manco, Banksy “was born in 1974 and raised in Bristol, England. The son of a photocopier technician, he trained as a butcher but became involved in graffiti during the great Bristol aerosol boom of the late 1980s.” Observers have noted that his style is similar to Blek le Rat, who began to work with stencils in 1981 in Paris and members of the anarcho-punk band Crass who maintained a graffiti stencil campaign on the London Tube System in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Known for his contempt for the government in labelling graffiti as vandalism, Banksy displays his art on public surfaces such as walls and even going as far as to build physical prop pieces. Banksy does not sell photos of street graffiti directly himself; however, art auctioneers have been known to attempt to sell his street art on location and leave the problem of its removal in the hands of the winning bidder. Banksy’s first film, Exit Through the Gift Shop, billed as “the world’s first street art disaster movie”, made its debut at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. The film was released in the UK on 5 March 2010.[10] In January 2011, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary for the film.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banksy

Never mind searching for who you are. Search for the person you aspire to be….

Robert Brault

free-lance writer who has contributed to magazines and newspapers in the USA for over 40 years

http://www.robertbrault.com/

In terms of art, the only real answer that I know of is to do it. If you don’t do it, you don’t know what might happen. ..

Harry Callahan

Eleanor, Chicago, 1949

Harry Morey Callahan (October 22, 1912 – March 15, 1999) was an influential twentieth century American photographer. Born in Detroit, Michigan, he began teaching himself photography in 1938. He formed a friendship with Todd Webb who was also destined to become a photographer.[1] A talk given by Ansel Adams in 1941 inspired him to take his work seriously. In 1941, Callahan and Webb visited Rocky Mountain State Park but didn’t return with any photographs.[1] In 1946 he was invited to teach photography at the Institute of Design in Chicago by László Moholy-Nagy. He moved to Rhode Island in 1961 to establish a photography program at the Rhode Island School of Design, teaching there until his retirement in 1977.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Callahan_(photographer)

Stopping at third base adds no more to the score than striking out…E. Joseph Cossman

Anxiety is a warning sign from the unconscious mind to focus on what you want…

Tad James

Dr. Tad James is a staunch believer in the inexhaustible inner potential of human beings. He is an exciting, dynamic transformational seminar leader, and a pioneer in the field of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP). As a successful Personal Success Coach and NLP Master Trainer, Tad is the creator of a revolutionary new paradigm for human change known as the Time Line Therapy® techniques. He is the author of 7 books and numerous audios and videos in the field of NLP, including the Best Seller “The Secret of Creating Your Future®”.

http://www.nlpcoaching.com/who-is-tad-james.html

Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else…

Judy Garland

Judy Garland (June 10, 1922 – June 22, 1969) was an American actress and singer. Through a career that spanned 45 of her 47 years, Garland attained international stardom as an actress in musical and dramatic roles, as a recording artist and on the concert stage. Respected for her versatility, she received a Juvenile Academy Award, won a Golden Globe Award, received the Cecil B. DeMille Award for her work in films, as well as Grammy Awards and a Special Tony Award.

After appearing in vaudeville with her sisters, Garland was signed to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as a teenager. There she made more than two dozen films, including nine with Mickey Rooney and the 1939 film with which she would be most identified, The Wizard of Oz. After 15 years, Garland was released from the studio but gained renewed success through record-breaking concert appearances, including a return to acting beginning with a critically acclaimed performance in A Star Is Born (1954), a critically acclaimed Carnegie Hall concert in 1961, and a well-regarded but short-lived television series (1963–64).

Despite her professional triumphs, Garland battled personal problems throughout her life. Insecure about her appearance, her feelings were compounded by film executives who told her she was unattractive and manipulated her on-screen physical appearance. Garland was plagued by financial instability, often owing hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes. She married five times, with her first four marriages ending in divorce. Garland died of an accidental drug overdose at the age of 47, leaving children Liza Minnelli, Lorna Luft and Joey Luft.

In 1997, Garland was posthumously awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Several of her recordings have been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. In 1999, the American Film Institute placed her among the ten greatest female stars in the history of American cinema.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judy_Garland