There is nothing that can stop the creative. If life is full of joy, joy feeds the creative process. If life is full of grief, grief feeds the creative process. How immense can be the power of circumstance, the power of life's pull in generating original breakthroughs of mind and heart, spirit and matter.
It's wonderful to retire to a mountaintop and paint pretty pictures. But more wonderful and more challenging still is for the artist to sit right in the midst of the karmic struggle, all the sufferers of all times and all places hanging on his brush. The least mark on the canvas becomes an act of supreme courage in which the suffering of the artist and his world are alchemized into something quite different, a thing of beauty and wonder.
—Stephen Nachmanovitch
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