©2002
A.L. Book
All rights reserved. All images are copyrighted and protected under copyright laws. Any reproduction, in any format, including derivative works is prohibited.
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"I remember thinking quite clearly that I wouldn't be able to be an artist and make a living. Now, over a decade later, I realize I will not be able to live and not be an artist."
A.L. Book on her Self Portrait, 1988
Although I've loved art since I was a young girl, avidly painted, and even pursued studies of studio and art history in college, for some reason it did not dawn on me until this year that I had to find a way to make art a central point of my existence.
Somewhere along the way the intellect of fear has erroded to an intellect of stagnation. Fed up with the monotony of safety, I have finally realized that to be an artist you simply have to "pursue" art not be a famous painter out of the starting gate. This show is my first step into this new path of discovery.
There is a wide bridge between my last work before the "desert of working life" (Self Portrait, 1988) and preparation for this day's show (Bottles, 1999). In that bridge I gained the wisdom I needed to internalize all the things I did not understand, but had memorized, from my Art History classes. Art really does change the world, even if it only happens once the artist is gone.
I now find myself drinking up every lesson I might possibly learn from those great painters that I simply did not understand when I was younger. This is why I have taken to replicating such masters as Van Gogh, Degas, Monet and Renoir. Through these studies my heart absorbed what my mind could not know.
"In the end, the only things that matter are things we can relate to--paintings that touch our emotions, break our hearts, or draw us back in time to a memory that we recall as clearly as yesterday."
A.L. Book on her study of Van Gogh's
Public Garden at Arles, 2000
It is my desire to impact the world the way these masters did. Not by a technique, and not by an accurracy of eye--but, instead, by some unforgettable, irreversible flicker of emotion that might make someone's life, including mine, a little richer.
A.L. Book
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| All photographs taken by Theodore L. Book, Sr. My thanks to Ted L. Book, Jr. for his assistance in setting up this website. Thanks to all my family and friends for your support in this first ever show of my paintings!
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