Heartist
“Language falls, comes from above as little luminous objects that fall from heaven, which I catch word after word with my hands,” says Maria Sabina.
My heaven is the river, and language once came out of a drop of water bursting into my cupped hands!
This to say that heartist was synonym with artist from the beginning. I got to art for no other reason than… I was feeling for a river!
For many years, I used Marina Abramovic’s quote as a preamble to my biography: “Art, it’s not about doing, it’s about being.” Years later, I met Ulay, Marina's former partner, in Japan while working on re-enlivening a deserted island. Correcting his ex, he said, “Art, it’s not about doing, it’s about becoming.” Doing art is partly becoming one’s definition of art. For me, it comes to the word heartist. I have written about heartist, but today I prefer to let it speak for itself.
It speaks like Mercury of old who carries a message from the soul whose meaning changes before it can be caught. Perhaps the whole is there from the beginning and it is just a journey of awakening.
We can receive only what we already have! We can become only what we already are! We can learn only what we already know! It is a matter of realizing potentialities. It is not a matter of “adding to” but of “developing,” of “evolving.” We contain within ourselves a world of capacities, of possibilities, which the outer world summons forth, speaks to, releases. Perhaps this is why we learn most about ourselves through devotion to others; why we become joyful and active as we respond to the formative forces in the materials in our crafts: their potentialities call forth our own, and in the dialogue of which I have spoken, we discover our own inner vision by bodying them forth.
— M. C. Richards
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The heart’s function is aesthetics.
— James Hillman
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