A generous encomium:
"Like many of his generation, Stokes was trained to see the canvas or sheet of paper as an arena where relationships between form, space, color, and line had to 'work' no matter what the subject. A discriminating visual intelligence has been the hallmark of his work since his first one-person show at Cordier & Ekstrom in 1986. Stokes' 'raw material' is a veritable mine of found imagery: the artifacts of culture, both high and low, from east and west. His images are like dreams in which the symbols point in two directions - toward the imagination of the artist and the history of the imagination. Harriet Shorr, Painter, NA
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"Form is everything." Jan Groover
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Edgar Degas and Stéphane Mallarmé were friends. Degas once said to the poet, "Stéphane, I have a wonderful idea for a sonnet!" To which Mallarmé replied, "But Edgar, sonnets are made with words - not ideas."
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"The relation between the representing and the represented world sometimes is a direct, mimetic one; but often it is an indirect, farfetched, surprising relation, so that it is the diffrence between the subject and the painting of it that is insisted upon, and is a principal source of our pleasure." Randall Jarrell
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"L'exactitude n'est pas la verité." Henri Matisse
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" . . . The insight of an artist . . . is something not appealing to the idea-oriented person. It concerns the work of art rather than the idea. (It concerns) first-hand understanding of the critical difference between one position on the surface and another one hundreth of an inch away from the first, or the divergence, however ineffable, between one color and another in saturation and luminosity - these are things upon which (artists) have concerned themselves, regardless of where or when they lived . . ." Mercedes Matter
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"A picture is something that requires as much knavery, trickery, and deceit as the perpetration of a crime." Edgar Degas
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"Poetry is not the thing said but a way of saying it." A.E. Houseman
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"Thinking is better than knowing, but both are less interesting than looking." Goethe
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"When you hit a wrong note it is the next note that makes it good or bad."
Miles Davis
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"Less is more, more or less." Ad Reinhardt
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"Art ain't nothin'. It's keeping busy that counts." Grandma Moses
"Like many of his generation, Stokes was trained to see the canvas or sheet of paper as an arena where relationships between form, space, color, and line had to 'work' no matter what the subject. A discriminating visual intelligence has been the hallmark of his work since his first one-person show at Cordier & Ekstrom in 1986. Stokes' 'raw material' is a veritable mine of found imagery: the artifacts of culture, both high and low, from east and west. His images are like dreams in which the symbols point in two directions - toward the imagination of the artist and the history of the imagination. Harriet Shorr, Painter, NA
__________________________________________________________________________
"Form is everything." Jan Groover
__________________________________________________________________________
Edgar Degas and Stéphane Mallarmé were friends. Degas once said to the poet, "Stéphane, I have a wonderful idea for a sonnet!" To which Mallarmé replied, "But Edgar, sonnets are made with words - not ideas."
_________________________________________________________________________
"The relation between the representing and the represented world sometimes is a direct, mimetic one; but often it is an indirect, farfetched, surprising relation, so that it is the diffrence between the subject and the painting of it that is insisted upon, and is a principal source of our pleasure." Randall Jarrell
_________________________________________________________________________
"L'exactitude n'est pas la verité." Henri Matisse
_________________________________________________________________________
" . . . The insight of an artist . . . is something not appealing to the idea-oriented person. It concerns the work of art rather than the idea. (It concerns) first-hand understanding of the critical difference between one position on the surface and another one hundreth of an inch away from the first, or the divergence, however ineffable, between one color and another in saturation and luminosity - these are things upon which (artists) have concerned themselves, regardless of where or when they lived . . ." Mercedes Matter
_________________________________________________________________________
"A picture is something that requires as much knavery, trickery, and deceit as the perpetration of a crime." Edgar Degas
_________________________________________________________________________
"Poetry is not the thing said but a way of saying it." A.E. Houseman
_________________________________________________________________________
"Thinking is better than knowing, but both are less interesting than looking." Goethe
_________________________________________________________________________
"When you hit a wrong note it is the next note that makes it good or bad."
Miles Davis
_________________________________________________________________________
"Less is more, more or less." Ad Reinhardt
_________________________________________________________________________
"Art ain't nothin'. It's keeping busy that counts." Grandma Moses
