Art From Intuition by Dean Nimmer

IN-TU-I-TION:

1.) Last night’s dream + impulsive idea + weird uncle + too much coffee + mystical vision + unrequited desire = INTUITION

“Tramontone”, oil on canvas, by Gregory Amenoff. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Artists must intuit, and they must trust their instincts, thereby taking a huge risk. That risk can result in outright failure at worst, or it may yield the artist a grand success, but without the development of the intuitive self and a willingness to embrace and finally trust it, little of consequence can be ac­complished. Having said that, the insights in this book are meant to speak to an audience much more broad and varied than the world populated by artists. The projects within these pages can speak to all of us—coaxing us to discard our fears of creativity and replace them with faith in an intuitive, inventive process—one that can transform the mundane into the remarkable and the blank canvas into something of great personal value.

Gregory Amenoff

Gregory Amenoff is Chairman of the Visual Arts Division and the Eve and Herman Gelman Professor of Visual Art at Columbia University in New York City. He served as President of the National Academy of Design from 2001 to 2005 and is currently Curator Governor of the Cue Art Foundation