I came across this post from a few years back with a short except from the writings of artist Paul Klee. While I initially posted it as a Quote of the Week it was actually the image that stopped me in my tracks, something Klee’s work often does for me. But beyond the image, I was taken once again by his views on the parallel natures of the creative process and the creation of this world. I have read this several times over the years and while it is short in length, it always gives me something new to think about.
This excerpt from On Modern Art, the 1924 treatise from the great Swiss artist Paul Klee is a bit more than a quote but since this is about art we’ll be a little flexible in our definition. And that, I believe, would please Klee, whose works often defied definition.
I know for me, he was a big influence if only in his attitude and the distinctness of his work. I always think of his work in terms of the color– sometimes muted yet intense and always having a melodic harmony to it.
It always feels like music to me.
I like his idea that the world is in the process of creation, of Genesis, and that it is not a final form. It allows for visionary work, for imagining other present worlds that extend beyond our perception because, as he writes, “In its present shape it is not the only possible world.”
And to me, that is an exciting proposition.
Redtree Times 
Klee went off in a direction I didn’t expect, and it was an interesting direction. Another thought that came to me is that, just as the Creator is in the creation, so the artist is in the art.
One of my favorite Joan Didion stories involves her taking her young daughter to the Chicago art museum. When the little girl saw O’Keeffe’s “Sky Above Clouds,” she said, “Who painted that? I have to talk to her.” She clearly intuited the artist/art connection.
ps ~ “Call of Freedom” is phenomenal. I thought of Rothko immediately. Then, it occurred to me that the tree seems to have emerged from the crack between the sections of color: like a dandelion in a crack in the pavement. And I don’t sense that it’s wind bending the tree. Rather, there’s a feeling of the tree being drawn toward the source of the call.
I didn’t think of it as the tree emerging from the crack between the two blocks of color but having you point it out makes me see it that way now. And you rcomment on the tree bending from being pulled rather than from the wind has me wondering about the nature of wind. Is wind just the force of that which is being pulled? It’s probably a basic weather question but it feels like more.
That’s a wonderful story about the little girl and the O’Keeffe painting.