Authors:
  1. Quotes
  2. Authors
  3. M
  4. Madeleine L'Engle
  5. Art

Madeleine LEngle Quotes about Art

All Madeleine L'Engle Quotes Age Art quotes Chaos Character Children Choices Christ Compassion Creativity Culture Darkness Discipline Earth Evil Failing Faith Feelings Giving Glory God Grace Growing Up Growth Hate Heart Heaven Home House Humility Hurt Husband Imagination Inspiration Inspirational Inspiring Intuition Journey Joy Language Laughter Letting Go Life Listening Literature Love Lying Maturity Morning Pain Past Prayer Quality Reading Reality Risk Science Silence Suffering Talent Tragedy Understanding Universe Water Writing
But unless we are creators we are not fully alive. What do I mean by creators? Not only artists, whose acts of creation are the obvious ones of working with paint of clay or words. Creativity is a way of living life, no

But unless we are creators we are not fully alive. What do I mean by creators? Not only artists, whose acts of creation are the obvious ones of working with paint of clay or words. Creativity is a way of living life, no matter our vocation or how we earn our living. Creativity is not limited to the arts, or having some kind of important career.

Madeleine L'Engle
Art, Live Life, Creativity

In art we are once again able to do all the things we have forgotten; we are able to walk on water; we speak to the angels who call us; we move, unfettered, among the stars.

Madeleine L'Engle
Art, Stars, Moving
FaceBook post by Madeleine L'Engle from Aug 02, 2016

Stories are able to help us to become more whole, to become Named. And Naming is one of the impulses behind all art; to give a name to the cosmos, we see despite all the chaos.

Madeleine L'Engle
Art, Names, Giving
Madeleine L'Engle (2016). “Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art”, p.41, Convergent Books

When we can play with the unself-conscious concentration of a child, this is: art: prayer: love.

Madeleine L'Engle
Art, Prayer, Children
Twitter post from Nov 19, 2010

When we look at a painting, or hear a symphony, or read a book, and feel more Named, then, for us, that work is a work of Christian art. But to look at a work of art and then to make a judgment as to whether or not it is art, and whether or not it is Christian, is presumptuous. It is something we cannot know in any conclusive way. We can know only if it speaks within our own hearts, and leads us to living more deeply with Christ in God.

Madeleine L'Engle
Christian, Art, Book
Madeleine L'Engle (2016). “Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art”, p.41, Convergent Books

To create a work of art, great or small, is work, hard work, and work requires discipline and order.

Madeleine L'Engle
Art, Hard Work, Order
Madeleine L'Engle (2016). “Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art”, p.138, Convergent Books

Basically there can be no categories such as 'religious' art and 'secular' art, because all true art is incarnational, and therefore 'religious.

Madeleine L'Engle
Religious, Art, Categories
Madeleine L'Engle (2016). “Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art”, p.24, Convergent Books

As I listen to the silence, I learn that my feelings about art and my feelings about the Creator of the Universe are inseparable. To try to talk about art and about Christianity is for me one and the same thing, and it means attempting to share the meaning of my life, what gives it, for me, its tragedy and its glory.

Madeleine L'Engle
Art, Mean, Giving
Madeleine L'Engle (2016). “Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art”, p.16, Convergent Books

Infinity is present in each part. A loving smile contains all art. The motes of starlight spark and dart. A grain of sand holds power and might.

Madeleine L'Engle
Inspiring, Art, Thoughtful

I believe that each work of art, whether it is a work of great genius, or something very small, comes to the artist and says, "Here I am. Enflesh me. Give birth to me."

Madeleine L'Engle
Art, Believe, Here I Am
Madeleine L'Engle (2016). “Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art”, p.18, Convergent Books

When the bright angel dominates, out comes a great work of art, a Michelangelo David or a Beethoven symphony.

Madeleine L'Engle
Art, Angel, Symphony
Madeleine L'Engle (2017). “A Severed Wasp: A Novel”, p.112, Open Road Media

If our lives are truly "hid with Christ in God," the astounding thing is that this hiddenness is revealed in all that we do and say and write. What we are is going to be visible in our art, no matter how secular (on the surface) the subject may be.

Madeleine L'Engle
Art, Writing, May
Madeleine L'Engle (2016). “Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art”, p.102, Convergent Books

Because I am a storyteller I live by words. Perhaps music is a purer art form. It may be that when we communicate with life on another planet, it will be through music, not through language or words.

Madeleine L'Engle
Art, May, Language
Madeleine L'Engle (2016). “Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art”, p.34, Convergent Books

Great art always transcends its culture, while lesser art merely reflects it.

Madeleine L'Engle
Art, Culture, Great Art

Art is an affirmation of life, a rebuttal of death. And here we blunder into paradox again, for during the creation of any form of art, art which affirms the value and the holiness of life, the artist must die. To serve a work of art, great or small, is to die, to die to self.

Madeleine L'Engle
Art, Self, Holiness

A life lived in chaos is an impossibility for the artist. No matter how unstructured may seem the painter's garret in Paris or the poet's pad in Greenwich Village, the artist must have some kind of order or he will proudce a very small body of work. To create a work of art, great or small, is work, hard work, and work requires discipline and order.

Madeleine L'Engle
Art, Hard Work, Paris
Madeleine L'Engle (2016). “Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art”, p.138, Convergent Books

All forms of art are consciousness expanders, and I am convinced that they will take us further, and more consciously, than drugs.

Madeleine L'Engle
Art, Drug, Consciousness
Twitter post from Nov 13, 2012

When a child who has been conceived in love is born to a man and a woman, the joy of that birth sings throughout the universe. The joy of writing or painting is much the same, and the insemination comes not from the artist himself but from his relationship with those he loves, with the whole world. All real art is, in its true sense, religious; it is a religious impulse; there is not such thing as a non-religious subject.

Madeleine L'Engle
Religious, Art, Children
"A Circle of Quiet (Crosswicks Journals, Book 1)". Book by Madeleine L'Engle, 1971.

I am convinced that each work of art, be it a great work of genius or something very small, has its own life, and it will come to the artist, the composer or the writer or the painter, and say, "Here I am: compose me; or write me; or paint me"; and the job of the artist is to serve the work.

Madeleine L'Engle
Art, Jobs, Writing
Madeleine L'Engle (2016). “The Irrational Season”, p.106, Open Road Media

The rational intellect doesn't have a great deal to do with love, and it doesn't have a great deal to do with art. I am often, in my writing, great leaps ahead of where I am in my thinking, and my thinking has to work its way slowly up to what the "superconscious" has already shown me in a story or poem.

Madeleine L'Engle
Art, Writing, Thinking
Madeleine L'Engle (2016). “A Circle of Quiet”, p.27, Open Road Media

All real art is, in its true sense, religious; it is a religious impulse; there is no such thing as a non-religious subject. But much bad or downright sacrilegious art depicts so-called religious subjects.

Madeleine L'Engle
Religious, Art, Real
Madeleine L'Engle (2016). “A Circle of Quiet”, p.32, Open Road Media

Art is not a mirror but an icon. It takes the chaos in which we live and shows us structure and pattern, not the structure of conformity which imprisons but the structure which liberates, sets us free to become growing, mature human beings.

Madeleine L'Engle
Art, Mirrors, Icons
Madeleine L'Engle (2016). “A Circle of Quiet”, p.74, Open Road Media

It is possible to suffer and despair an entire lifetime and still not give up the art of laughter.

Madeleine L'Engle
Art, Laughter, Giving Up
Madeleine L'Engle (2008). “A Ring of Endless Light: The Austin Family Chronicles”, p.68, Macmillan

Art is communication.

Madeleine L'Engle
Art, Communication, Art Is
Madeleine L'Engle (2016). “Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art”, p.166, Convergent Books

I like the fact that in ancient Chinese art the great painters always included a deliberate flaw in their work: human creation is never perfect.

Madeleine L'Engle
Art, Creativity, Perfect
Madeleine L'Engle (2016). “A Circle of Quiet”, p.21, Open Road Media

You May Also Like: