Kenneth Coutts-Smith Quotes

Most inner-oriented artists share a common characteristic, a certain quality of obsession.

The language of images [of inner-oriented artists] does not follow a code structure that is evident and widely accepted, but is more likely to be a complex of symbols that have a profound meaning for the artists themselves.

The revelatory or visionary is the province of the 'private' artist, who in order to render his personal world comprehensible or even tolerable, must force others to believe in it and therefore share it. It is said that 'the poet does not wish to be understood, but to be believed.

When the symbols are 'public' they usually act in an oblique manner, revealing themselves as archetypal symbols, which though familiar, have their central meanings obscured as is usual in esoteric imagery.

The 'public' artist confirms the world that we already accept, though he inevitably widens our experience of it; his method is one of research, the progressive uncovering of detail.