M.C. Richards: Being Passionate, Defined

          But of course we have to be passionate.  That is to say, when we are, we must be able to be.  We must be able to let the intensity -- the Dionysian rapture and disorder and the celebration of chaos, of potentiality, the experience of surrender -- we must be able to let it live in our bodies, in our hands, through our hands into the materials we work with.  I sense this: that we must be steady enough in ourselves, to be open and to let the winds of life blow through us, to be our breath, our inspiration; to breathe with them, mobile and soft in the limberness of our bodies, in our agility, our ability, as it were, to dance, and yet to stand upright, to be intact, to be persons.  We come to know ourselves, and others, through the images we create in such moods.  These images are disclosures of ourselves to ourselves.  They are life-revelations.  If we can stay 'on center' and look with clear-seeing eyes and compassionate hearts at what we have done, we may advance in self-knowledge and in knowledge of our materials and of the world in its larger concerns.


--M.C. Richards, Centering: In Pottery, Poetry, and the Person