Many years ago, I had the joy of visiting a retrospective exhibit of Wassily Kandinsky’s paintings. His work and that exhibit has stayed with me ever since. It felt as if each painting drew me into his inner world.

I have been most inspired by the way Kandinsky approached two of his greatest influences: music and spirituality.

His book, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, is one of the books that lives on my night table.

Here are 5 of his quotes:

“Lend your ears to music. Open your eyes to painting, and… stop thinking! Just ask yourself whether the work has enabled you to ‘walk about’ into a hitherto unknown world. If the answer is yes, what more do you want?”

“Every man who steeps himself in the spiritual possibilities of his heart is a valuable helper in the building of the spiritual pyramid which will someday reach to heaven.”

“The work of art is born of the artist in a mysterious and secret way. From him it gains life and being. Nor is its existence casual and inconsequent. But it has a definite and purposeful strength alike in its material and spiritual life.”

“The impact of the acute angle of a triangle on a circle produces an effect no less powerful than the finger of GOD touching the finger of Adam in Michelangelo.”

“Every work of art is the child of its age and, in many cases, the mother of our emotions. It follows that each period of culture produces an art of its own which can never be repeated.”

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