Licia Borrelli

“What could she possibly have done that was so heinous as to earn her a lifetime of self-mortification? No one short of a tyrant deserved such unremitting agony. I cried there with her, for her, for Eve, for sorrows past, for sorrows yet to come. I put my pencil away. It was wrong to draw live pain. If there had been an artist at Bethany, it would have been wrong to intrude his chalk or charcoal on Mary Magdalene’s weeping as she washed Jesus’ feet. Some things were too raw for art until time dulled their sharpness.”
― Susan Vreeland, The Passion of Artemisia

“I retain, but suspend, my personal taste to deal with the panoply of the art I see. I have a trick for doing justice to an uncongenial work: “What would I like about this if I liked it?” I may come around; I may not. Failing that, I wonder, What must the people who like this be like? Anthropology.”
― Peter Schjeldahl

“No holy place existed without us then,
no woodland, no dance, no sound.


Beyond all hope, I prayed those timeless
days we spent might be made twice as long.


I prayed one word: I want.


Someone, I tell you, will remember us,
even in another time.”
― Sappho

“Things will change, Father. They must. And art can help create the change.”
― Susan Vreeland, The Passion of Artemisia