Albert Einstein? Christina Baldwin? Apocryphal?

Question for Quote Investigator: There is a quotation about art attributed to the famous scientist Albert Einstein which describes a person extending a hand into the universe and acting as a “conduit for passing energy”. I am skeptical of this ascription because I have been unable to find a citation. Would you please help?
Reply from Quote Investigator: There is no substantive evidence that Einstein made this statement. It is not listed in the 2010 book “The Ultimate Quotable Einstein” which is a comprehensive reference about the physicist’s pronouncements from Princeton University Press.1
The earliest match known to QI occurred in a 1990 spiritual book by Christina Baldwin.2 A vivid statement within Baldwin’s book caught the eye of researcher Rosalie Maggio who placed it into her 1992 compilation “The Beacon Book of Quotations by Women”. Emphasis added to excerpts by QI:3
Spiritual love is a position of standing with one hand extended into the universe and one hand extended into the world, letting ourselves be a conduit for passing energy.
Christina Baldwin, Life’s Companion, Journal Writing as a Spiritual Quest (1990)
The above statement was about spiritual love and not art; however, by 2018 the remark had been altered to produce a new expression and had implausibly been reassigned to Albert Einstein who had died decades before in 1955. The “Newtown Bee” of Newtown, Connecticut on August 31, 2018 printed a miscellaneous set of quotations which included the following:4
Art is standing with one hand extended into the universe and one hand extended into the world and letting ourselves be a conduit for passing energy.
—Albert Einstein
Below is one additional selected citation and a conclusion.
Continue reading “Quote Origin: One Hand Extended Into the Universe and One Hand Extended Into the World”