Drawings noted by educator Maxine Greene.

Drawings noted by educator Maxine Greene.

  Of course, the aesthetic experience is the possibility of looking at a work of art and finding that it addresses something in you, that there’s a kind of responding, a tremor. Once you see the painting, it moves you. It is not true of all art, it’s true of some. Then, you have to force yourself to understand the meaning. Pablo Picasso’s “Guernica.” I looked at that and first I didn’t respond to it. First it was a mess. As I watched it, I looked at it, and after a while it became so meaningful. Not just human suffering but for human possibility. I would love to be able to paint like Picasso (laughter). I lived by the Brooklyn Museum, and I remember going from the big wide hall down at the bottom, up two flights, and then to the modern paintings, the Impressionist paintings. I was really hit by that. Not just the landscapes but also the images of individuals. The variety of human faces, that made me wish I could create something like that. I had to give it up, because I am no Raphael or Rembrandt (laughter). Now, when I go to a museum and look at a painting, I look at the way the painter painted the eyes, and they seem to look at you. I think, how could they do that?

(Excerpt by her interview)