I was inspired to create this series by naikki while looking through her gallery of diverse artwork and reading through her journals which are focused on her favorite inspiring writers and thinkers. I felt certain there must be beautiful artwork in the form of portraits and tributes to these writers and their stories. I found most of naikki's choices of quotes to be inclusionary, redeeming and welcoming to any artist on their own path. Instead of just crediting naikki with the inspiration for this new series on depthRADIUS, I also invited her to provide a quote about Herman Hesse of her own to kick off this series.
Contemplations of the sharp-eyed mystic: when words become the palette to paint the journey to self realization.— naikki
About Artists on Writers
Writers will always find inspiration in the visions of artists, always feeling compelled to tell the stories behind the moments captured in artists’ unforgettable images,
Just as,
Artists will always find inspiration in the words of writers, always feeling compelled to lend visual reality and habitat to the characters described in the scribe’s haunting words.
A Quote From Herman Hesse
Life is a process of becoming...
“There is no escape. You can't be a vagabond and an artist and still be a solid citizen, a wholesome, upstanding man. You want to get drunk, so you have to accept the hangover. You say yes to the sunlight and pure fantasies, so you have to say yes to the filth and the nausea. Everything is within you, gold and mud, happiness and pain, the laughter of childhood and the apprehension of death. Say yes to everything, shirk nothing. You are not harmonious, or the master of yourself. You are a bird in the storm. Let it storm! Let it drive you!”
— Hermann Hesse
Hermann Hesse Inspired Artwork
Steppenwolf
by Herman Hesse
I sped through heaven and saw God at work.
I suffered holy pains.
I dropped all my defences and was afraid of nothing in the world.
I accepted all things and to all things I gave up my heart.
Demian (excerpt)
by Herman Hesse
In The Fog
It's strange to wander in the fog!
A lonely bush, a lonely stone,
No tree can see the other one,
And one is all alone.
The world was full of friends back then,
As life was light to me;
But now the fog has come,
And no one can I see.
Truly, no one is wise,
Who does not know the dark
Which inevitably and silently
Does from others him part.
It's strange to wander in the fog!
Life is loneliness
No Man knows the other one,
And one is all alone.
Demian (excerpt)
by Herman Hesse
The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born must first destroy a world.
