Marguerite Zorach

“We survived these years by never spending a cent on anything that was not essential...we saw that there was always money for materials...we made our own canvases...used the stretchers over and over, rolling up the finished pictures. When desperate we painted on both sides of the canvas (cited in Colleary 24).”

“I have no artistic creed or formula. I have no fixed aim to which I am bending every energy. I have made no wonderful or new artistic discovery. Perhaps I have not even a new vision…In so far as my life is rich in emotional and intellectual experiences, actual or in imagination, in so far as I seek for a deeper and more comprehensive grasp of things, in so far I shall have material from which to create.”

“Since pictures such as mine are so different from the pictures people are used to framing, it isn’t really strange that they should require different treatment. White not being a color (as is gold) forms the best frames for pictures high in key and in pure color, as it does not destroy the balance of color in the picture and brings out each color in its fuller intensity. Black is next best, I think.”

“The Salon of French Artists is recognized as the most difficult in which to gain entrance of any of the several held there each year. That two Fresno girls and no less than eleven native Californians have presented specimens which the discriminating French critics considered worthy of acceptance, is a recognition of the highest standard of art in California never before accorded in Paris (3).”

“I remember reading not long ago in a San Francisco paper how the girls of this [...] American Girls' Art Club had astonished all Paris by taking long tramps and sketching expeditions into the woods of France unchaperoned. Astonished all Paris! Why Paris never even raises an eyebrow when we bold artists brave the dangers of her forests and suburbs all alone. As is a favorite custom of girls here, I have even sketched down along the Seine among the roughest class of workmen and tramps and was never more courteously treated anywhere (Burk 2008, 89-90).”