The Woman Who Says No: Françoise Gilot

 

I had a very hard time putting down my copy of The Woman Who Says No: Françoise Gilot on Her Life With and Without Picasso - Rebel, Muse, Artist. I devoured about 130 pages of it yesterday and finished it late Wednesday night. Gilot is my new hero!

  

"You must try out different things. Put a stroke here, draw a line there. Then you will suddenly notices that something appearing on the paper in front of your eyes begins to fascinate you. You notice a line you just didn't see before, and you begin to work with it. In the end, a mistake is no longer a mistake, because you have given it its own space and significance in the larger whole."

Another quote that resonated with me:

"What would happen if we were to understand chaos as possibility? If we were to simply allow ourselves the freedom to make mistakes, because they give rise to the new and unexpected?"

-The Woman Who Says No: Françoise Gilot on Her Life With and Without Picasso - Rebel, Muse, Artist

Truly inspiring and well worth the read. I'm going to read her book, Life With Picasso as well as Lisa Alther's About Women: Conversations Between a Writer and a Painter this summer.

More about Françoise here and the Archives here.

 

 

 

 

All of the above artwork is by Françoise Gilot.