In song, the duende would appear not in a beautiful voice but when that voice tears, scorches, robs itself of the security of technique and opens into the unknown.

And onstage? Duende rises to edgy, inexplicable urges; it applauds impossible unions, sexual and otherwise.

It resides in irrational fears, oversized desires and long-buried secrets. ... We feel it more than think it. When the duende is activated in a person, we all vibrate.

Lorca says it best: "The duende takes it upon himself to make us suffer by means of a drama of living forms."

It is in just such caves -- such places of refuge -- that we lick our wounds and prepare for the next battle in the real world.

Our need for such places never subsides, as any fan of escapist literature will tell you, but they are especially valuable for the potentially serious reader -- and writer -- going through those vulnerable years when the child's imagination is evolving into the more sophisticated and organized adult imagination.

Crewdson's works seem to be above all psychological portraits, and thus may be best explained in psychoanalytic terms rather than social or art-world ones. 

Like the self, pictures have a surface that both reveals and keeps things hidden. These pictures keep their meaning internal; what is perceptible is only part of the story - think by way of contrast of the photograph in conceptual art which aspires to relate information. 

But discontinuities are essential features of consciousness, as much as the desire for some wholeness of perception. 

The gaps in consciousness are repeatedly returned to, like itches that can't be scratched. Jacques Lacan terms this "the real". ....

Crewdson imagines disaster, violence and violation. But he does not depict it directly. Instead he makes oblique and elegant suggestion, preserves the refinement of his sensibility by the delicacy of his art...

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Firmly marking the edge in his work, he allows us to cross it, to complete his thought and, in a sense, the photograph, and the transgression it almost names.

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The images record a re-creation of the dance that was originally performed by members of Chief Big Foot's band on December 29, 1890 near Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota. 

The intent was to capture the event as a delirious remembrance, an ephemeral dream. Accompanying these and other related images is extensive literary and historical documentation of the period during which the Ghost Dance originated, leading up to and beyond the tragic massacre at Wounded Knee. ...

Part of the proceeds from the sale of Miyelo books will be donated by  to the SuAnne Big Crow Boys & Girls Club of Pine Ridge, South Dakota.

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When I first arrived in New Zealand [to film Lord of the Rings], for example, I was surprised and pleased to recognise a lot of the designs in traditional Maori art as being similar to forms in some of my own paintings and photographs. 

This all probably has to do with the fact that, regardless of whether we have knowingly made any comparative mythology studies or not, we as human beings have much more in common with each other and with those who came before us than not.

Viggo Mortensen - about creating photographs for his book Miyelo - from interview article: Viggo Mortensen on photography, art and politics, HouseOfTelcontar.com, Oct 09, 2003

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A cinematic visionary in an age of persistent aesthetic retreat, she doesn't come across as a woman -- or artist -- who worries about being labeled unruly. 

If anything, to judge by her movies and all her difficult women who never fit in, settle down or shut up -- unless they're actually willfully mute, as [Holly] Hunter's character is in "The Piano" -- the reverse seems true.

One marker of Campion's women is that each experiences radical mind- and soul-stirring change. ("I have," she says, "a close eye for transformation.") 

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"I think sexuality is a really strong force in everybody," Campion says, "and you sort of have to come to terms with it. It's the animal inside you. You can't resist it." 

That may not always make for comfortable viewing, but as Campion also says, "I believe in disturbance. If you don't embrace disturbance, it will shut down your life."

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I think a lot of children experience this, when you see them demonstrative and passionate, displaying, showing off, and doing the things they do because they can't communicate with words.

When we find these focus points and we're able to unlock our inner feeling, then we're able to remain healthy in the sense that we're able to air the private things that bring us into contact with things that we aren't normally allowed to demonstrate or experience.

During this process, we come to discover the paradox that many artists perceive: That which we had previously run from and rejected turns out to be the redemptive source of vitality, creativity, and authentic spirituality.

It can also be one of the most dynamic methods of meeting and redeeming one's devils and demons.