Frederick Franck: Do you believe in God?" "Which one?

Art is neither a profession nor a hobby. Art is a way of being.

Frederick Franck

hobbies wise art

I have learned that what I have not drawn I have never really seen, and that when I start drawing an ordinary thing, I realize how extraordinary it is, sheer miracle.

Frederick Franck

drawing miracle art

It is in order to really see, to see ever deeper, ever more intensely, hence to be fully aware and alive, that I draw what the Chinese call 'The Ten Thousand Things' around me. Drawing is the discipline by which I constantly rediscover the world. I have learned that what I have not drawn, I have never really seen, and that when I start drawing an ordinary thing, I realize how extraordinary it is, sheer miracle.

Frederick Franck

drawing discipline order

In this twentieth century, to stop rushing around, to sit quietly on the grass, to switch off the world and come back to the earth, to allow the eye to see a willow, a bush, a cloud, a leaf, is an unforgettable experience.

Frederick Franck

rushing eye clouds

We do a lot of looking: we look through lenses, telescopes, television tubes... Our looking is perfected every day, but we see less and less.

Frederick Franck

lenses vision looks

Merely looking at the world around us is immensely different from seeing it.

Frederick Franck

perspective different world

Everyone thinks he knows what a lettuce looks like. But start to draw one and you realise the anomaly of having lived with lettuces all your life but never having seen one, never having seen the semi-translucent leaves curling in their own lettuce way, never having noticed what makes a lettuce a lettuce rather than a curly kale.

Frederick Franck

kale looks thinking

I know artists whose medium is life itself, and who express the inexpressible without brush, pencil, chisel or guitar. They neither paint nor dance. Their medium is Being. Whatever their hand touches has increased life.... They are the artists of being alive.

Frederick Franck

guitar artist hands

You are not copying nature, but responding to nature in full awareness, to the way nature expresses itself in that object.

Frederick Franck

copying awareness way

The eye awakened is the eye in love.

Frederick Franck

awakened eye

To see the human condition in the old woman, in the child, in the model on the stand, in that particular human being, and to let the hand trace it, this act of adoration is called, 'drawing from life.

Frederick Franck

drawing children hands

While drawing grasses I learn nothing 'about' grass, but wake up to the wonder that there is grass at all.

Frederick Franck

wake-up drawing wonder

The religions are delusional constructs formed around an infallible core.

Frederick Franck

infallible constructs delusional

If you still have to talk about Ultimate Reality See how it manifests itself nakedly in Every thing!

Frederick Franck

ultimate stills reality

In the history of everyone in whom the artist-within has survived conditioning, schooling, training - there are (persons) influences that have kept him alive, awake .. who have encouraged him without even trying - just by being. They have been One's real teachers.

Frederick Franck

artist real teacher

Drawing is the discipline by which I constantly rediscover the world.

Frederick Franck

drawing discipline world

Enlightenment is simply sanity~ the sanity in which I see my real situation in the living fabric of all that exists.

Frederick Franck

real courage inspirational

I have learned that what I have not drawn, I have never really seen

Frederick Franck

sketching i-have-learned drawing

The clearsighted eye turns the light back to see its own Original Nature.

Frederick Franck

turns light eye

When the eye wakes up to see again, it suddenly stops taking anything for granted.

Frederick Franck

gratitude eye wise