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The function of the artist in a disturbed society is to give awareness of the universe, to ask the right questions, and to elevate the mind. (Marina Abramovic)
As artists we are manifesting thought into reality every time we create. (Cristina Acosta)
Artists... disappeared long ago as social forces. So did the church. (Henry Brooks Adams)
The artist that paints every tiny little detail is an artist with nothing better to do. (Samuel Adoquei)
- Let Us Now Praise Famous Men...
Isn't every human being both a scientist and an artist; and in writing of human experience, isn't there a good deal to be said for recognizing that fact and for using both methods? (James Agee)
- 1982 essay Material as Metaphor...
Most of our lives we live closed up in ourselves, with a longing not to be alone, to include others in that life that is invisible and intangible. To make it visible and tangible, we need light and material, any material. And any material can take on the burden of what had been brewing in our consciousness or subconsciousness, in our awareness or in our dreams. (Anni Albers)
No man who has managed to keep out of an office can be called a failure in life. (Richard Aldington)
That's the artist's role - to strike out always for something new, to break away, to defy, to... grapple with the unfamiliar. (Brian Aldiss)
Being an artist and being a teacher are two conflicting things. When I paint, my work
manifests the unexpected... In teaching it's just the opposite. I must account for every line, shape and colour and I am forced to give an explanation of the inexplicable and account for the variety of styles the students present. (Pierre Alechinsky)
Composer, sculptor, painter, poet, prophet, sage – these are the makers of the after-world, the architects of heaven. The world is beautiful because they have lived. Without them, laboring humanity would perish. (James Allen)
It gives me hope that new artists might be able to look at themselves and think about, 'What are my changes going to be?' (Carlos Alomar)
For it is truly bizarre for artists to be universally ranked among the giants, for generation after generation... and then be cast from the highest slopes of Parnassus to the lower slopes of art's ever-growing dust-heap. (Joseph W. Alsop, Jr.)
I see and write things first as an artist, second as a woman, and third as a New Yorker. All three have built-in perspectives that aren't neutral. (Laurie Anderson)
- Winesburg, Ohio...
Everyone knows of the talking artists. Throughout all of the known history of the world they have gathered in rooms and talked. They talk of art and are passionately, almost feverishly, in earnest about it. They think it matters much more than it does. (Sherwood Anderson)
- Posterity: Letters of Great Americans to Their Children...
The thing, of course, is to make yourself alive. Most people remain all of their lives in a stupor. The point of being an artist is that you may live. (Sherwood Anderson)
Creative artists are mankind's awakeners: through the language of metaphor we are the summoners of the outward mind to conscious contact with our inner selves as spirit. (Ran Andrews)
An artist is not one who has solved life's problems. He is one who accepts life's problems. (Anonymous)
Poets and artists all suffer from the same malaise of spirit. Impoverished by a willingness to trade an ounce of essence for a particle of salt. (Anonymous)
Without poets, without artists, men would soon weary of nature's monotony. (Guillaume Apollinaire)
Artists are, above all, men who want to become inhuman. (Guillaume Apollinaire)
My art is what I do and how I live. I paint the things around me, the things I know and feel comfortable with. (Dion Archibald)
Artists help us see the surprising beauty that breaks into our daily lives by celebrating that which might otherwise pass by unnoticed. (Juliette Aristides)
Artists should work together like the artists of the Middle Ages. (Hans Jean Arp)
As an artist your first loyalty is to your art. Unless this is the case, you're going to be a second-rate artist. (Margaret Atwood)
All works of art are commissioned in the sense that no artist can create one by a simple act of will but must wait until what he believes to be a good idea for a work comes to him. (W. H. Auden)
As artists we are educators and communicators. We need to keep our finger on the pulse of society. (Elizabeth Azzolina)
I am also an artist. I have the whole world as my canvas. I paint souls... (Meher Baba)
I love artists, because through art one can express oneself beautifully. (Meher Baba)
Creators of any kind must find their voice... the tone, style, tenor, pitch, personality we use to express ourselves. Our voice is our essence, writ plain for the world to see. (Leo Babauta)
We're the bridge across forever, arching above the sea, adventuring for our pleasure, living mysteries for the fun of it, choosing disasters, triumphs, challenges, impossible odds, testing ourselves over and again, learning love and love and LOVE! (Richard Bach)
The artist should open the eyes of the viewer to overlooked beauty that is sometimes right in front of us. (Kenn Backhaus)
I don't think people are born artists; I think it comes from a mixture of your surroundings, the people you meet, and luck. (Sir Francis Bacon)
Everyone needs an identity of their own, not in relation to someone else... someone's daughter, sister, wife, mother. 'Artist' is mine alone. (Janet Badger)
Everything that is not art, I try to transform it into art. (Nidaa Badwan)
Let the artist show his world, the beauty that was born with him, that never was before and never will be again. (Hermann Bahr)
Artists are better at finding a way to kill their time. (John Baldessari)
What the artist does is jump-start your mind and make you see something fresh, as if you were a visitor to the moon. An artist breathes life back into stereotypes. (John Baldessari)
There are too many artists, too many dealers and too much art. (Darby Bannard)
I think there is an element of nihilism about, but I don't think most artists feel their work is meaningless. (Leonard Baskin)
I am not a black artist, I am an artist. (Jean-Michel Basquiat)
I am an artist who, for forty years / Has stood at the lake edge / Throwing stones in the lake, / Sometimes, very faintly, / I hear a splash. (Maxwell Bates)
An artist is only an artist on condition that he neglects no aspect of his dual nature. This dualism is the power of being oneself and someone else at one and the same time. (Charles Baudelaire)
In order for the artist to have a world to express he must first be situated in this world, oppressed or oppressing, resigned or rebellious, a man among men. (Charles Baudelaire)
Being an artist is like being an Olympic athlete: years of sweat and dedication to build up skills, lots of sacrifice along the way, lots of obstacles to overcome. All that, and no gold, silver, or bronze medals. (Theresa Bayer)
There is no ready vocabulary to describe the ways in which artists become artists, no recognition that artists must learn to be who they are - even as they cannot help being who they are. (David Bayles, Ted Orland)
- Art and Fear, 1993...
To make art is to sing with the human voice. To do this you must first learn that the only voice you need is the voice you already have. (David Bayles, Ted Orland)
One hundred artists introduce us to one hundred worlds. (William Baziotes)
We are painters first, artists always, and as such not bound by anything but our innate desire to create. (Mary Todd Beam)
The artist has to be something like a whale swimming with his mouth wide open, absorbing everything until he has what he really needs. (Romare Bearden)
If you're any kind of artist, you make a miraculous journey, and you come back and make some statements in shapes and colors of where you were. (Romare Bearden)
Artists are fiery, they do not weep! (Ludwig van Beethoven)
The artist's role is to invent rhythms and forms to reveal a deeper apprehension of reality for the viewer. (Leland Bell)
The ideal artist is he who knows everything, feels everything, experiences everything, and retains his experience in a spirit of wonder and feeds upon it with creative lust... (George Bellows)
The artist is the person who makes life more interesting or beautiful, more understandable or mysterious, or probably, in the best sense, more wonderful. (George Bellows)
There are certain aspects of being an artist which I won't accept, such as the insistence on the 'cult of personality'; I like to remain anonymous and just get on with it. I don't want my life to be the first you think about when you look at the pictures. (Zoe Benbow)
At moments we are all artists. (Arnold Bennett)
The public is a great actuality, like war. If you are a creative and creating artist, you cannot ignore it, though it can ignore you. (Arnold Bennett)
-purported to have said...
The artist's life is the best life... if you can get through the first forty years. (Thomas Hart Benton)
As an artist you should be in business until the time when you almost can't see. (Roloff Beny)
The artist, depicting man disdainful of the storm and stress of life, is no less reconciling and healing than the poet who, while endowing Nature and Humanity, rejoices in its measureless superiority to human passions and human sorrows. (Bernard Berenson)
The artist is extremely lucky who is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him. At that point, he's in business. (John Berryman)
The nation is bound together by its creative artists and not by parallel lines of rusting steel. (Pierre Berton)
Everybody is an artist. (Joseph Beuys)
- Joseph Beuys... Public Dialogue, 1974...
Here my idea is to declare that art is the only possibility for evolution, the only possibility to change the situation in the world. But then you have to enlarge the idea of art to include the whole creativity. And if you do that, it follows logically that every living being is an artist - an artist in the sense that he can develop his own capacity. And therefore it's necessary at first that society cares about the educational system, that equality of opportunity for self-realization is guaranteed. (Joseph Beuys)
A special moment in time excites the artist, drives her to risk even failure, if she but takes the chance to capture only a fraction of what she sees, of what she feels, from this wonderful thing we call Life! (Betty Jean Billups)
We artists are the first to see the light at the end of the chaotic tunnels we all live in, and we dare to move toward it. (Eleanor Blair)
- Dear James: Letters to a Young Illustrator...
We artists are hypersensitive, or we wouldn't be - couldn't be - artists. (R. O. Blechman)
Bring something new, something beautiful and something filled with light into the world. (Ross Bleckner)
Artists feel the need to be in control of their own lives. It's not just about money, but also a need for independence. (Linda Blondheim)
My whole life has been devoted to improving my work and keeping alive the Creator's spark in my soul. Each of us has a spark, and we've all got to account for what we do with it. (Rosa Bonheur)
The artist who paints the emotions creates an enclosed world... the picture... which, like a book, has the same interest no matter where it happens to be. Such an artist, we may imagine, spends a great deal of time doing nothing but looking, both around him and inside him. (Pierre Bonnard)
A writer - and, I believe, generally all persons - must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art. (Jorge Luis Borges)
No one really knows why we paint; it's just what we do. (Sandra Bos)
An artist is attracted to certain kinds of form without knowing why. You adopt a position intuitively: only later do you attempt to rationalize or even justify it. (Fernando Botero)
An artist can show things that other people are terrified of expressing. (Louise Bourgeois)
Every nation which has made a lasting contribution to mankind has been aware of its artists. (Harry J. Boyle)
Are you an artist? Look about you. Is there a physical tool whose use you have mastered, a part of your body that responds utterly to your control? Is your motive esthetic? If so, you are an artist. If not, you are probably a writer. (Robert Brault)
Poets and painters are outside the class system, or rather they constitute a special class of their own, like the circus people and the Gipsies. (Gerald Brenan)
Art and I have an agreement... I won't ask where we are going and art won't ask, 'Why me?' (Bob Brendle)
As an artist, I feel lucky to have been given the gift of creativity so that I may share my vision of a better world. (Romero Britto)
Isn't the mind of the artist brimming with arcane layers? Even artists don't really understand other artists let alone themselves. (Harley Brown)
Artists are just people. (Peter William Brown)
Art is just something that human beings need to do. Some get to make art every day. Most just make their art when they get the chance. History does not care. History gets the work. (Peter William Brown)
The artist has one function – to affirm and glorify life. (W. Edward Brown)
I think that the artist should exhibit in black sections of the communities and colleges. And I think that the artist should, the black artist, should share whatever knowledge he has with black communities and black universities. At the same time, I do not think the artist should segregate himself. (Vivian E. Browne)
To create art means to be crazy alone forever. (Charles Bukowski)
An artist feels things largely. (John Burk)
Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact. (William S. Burroughs)
Artists provide a necessary function, which is to remind people that they have the creative potential in themselves and, by extension, the gumption not to depend on others to provide it for them. (Brett Busang)
- The Way of All Flesh, 1903...
Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself... (Samuel Butler, novelist)
An artist is like a prophet. He must lead people and help them get acquainted with what he sees. (George Buytendorp)
There's nothing about being an artist that is terribly practical. (Gail Caduff-Nash)
What an artist the world is losing in me! (Nero Claudius Caesar)
Art entered my conscious life when I viewed bright red and yellow plastic mugs at the age of four. (Gavin Calf)
Nearly every artist continually wants to reach the edge of nothingness - the point where you can't go any further. (Harry Callahan)
The need to be a great artist makes it hard to be an artist. The need to produce a great work of art makes it hard to produce any art at all. (Julia Cameron)
- The Sound of Paper, 2005...
Most artists, ashamed of their need for encouragement, try to carry their work to term like a secret pregnancy. (Julia Cameron)
I'm thinking to myself, I just love doing the art; it takes me a morning to do. (Eddie Campbell)
What the artist must render is a living moment somehow, a living moment
actually in action or an inward experience. (Joseph Campbell)
Artists paint virtual doorways. Viewers stand in front and choose whether to enter the visual narrative... (Ken Campbell)
All artists are two-headed calves. (Truman Capote)
The artist himself is often surprised at the finished work of art. He cannot tell 'how it happened', nor could he repeat the feat at someone's bidding. (John F. Carlson)
It is imperative that the artist reveal through the medium in which he is happiest, what he sees, thinks and feels about his surroundings. (Franklin Carmichael)
Remember I'm an artist. And you know what that means in a court of law. Next worst to an actress. (Joyce Cary)
I am a very simple man. I am a man first, an artist second. My first obligation is to the welfare of my fellow man. I will endeavour to meet this obligation through music, since it transcends language, politics and national boundaries. (Pablo Casals)
An artist in Canada can teach, starve, or go commercial. (A. J. Casson)
I tend not to work with a specific person in mind. Art is a matter of statistics. It's not about individuals. It's about people. (Maurizio Cattelan)
As artists we all envisage new frontiers and challenges within our individual capabilities, as well as new visions as we travel through life. (John Cerlienco)
The most seductive thing about art is the personality of the artist himself. (Paul Cezanne)
There are two things in the painter, the eye and the mind; each of them should aid the other. (Paul Cezanne)
If we artists didn't have a 'screw loose' we wouldn't be artists! (Jane Champagne)
The creative artist seems to be almost the only kind of man that you could never meet on neutral ground. You can only meet him as an artist. He sees nothing objectively because his own ego is always in the foreground of every picture. (Raymond Chandler)
Don't expect honesty from artists at any time. Massive delicate egos and a myopic view of reality don't make for any kind of study. Artists aren't that special. (Dinos Chapman)
The artists... that's what makes it so good for us... (Ray Charles)
He who desires nothing, hopes for nothing, and is afraid of nothing, cannot be an artist. (Anton Chekhov)
An artist observes, selects, guesses, and synthesizes. (Anton Chekhov)
An artist's flair is sometimes worth a scientist's brains. (Anton Chekhov)
I set my sights upon becoming the kind of artist who would make a contribution to art history. (Judy Chicago)
Somebody once said people become artists because they have a certain kind of energy to release. That rings true to me. It must have an outlet. That's why I draw. (Dale Chihuly)
It is an artist's duty to be on the wrong end of the see-saw. (Billy Childish)
Profound statements must be drawn by the artist from the most secret recesses of his being; there no murmuring torrent, no birdsong, no rustle of leaves can distract him. (Giorgio de Chirico)
Our art is meant to be given away, stolen, borrowed, begged and paid for... like our heart. (Toni Ciserella)
The great artist takes what he needs. (Sir Kenneth Clark)
The invitation for artists to compete to see who can be the most charitable is a wonderful thing. (Bruce Cockburn)
The sociability of artists is a paradoxical and precarious thing, and ceases the instant they begin their actual artistic work. (R. G. Collingwood)
The artist appeals to that part of our being which is not dependent on wisdom; to that in us which is a gift and not an acquisition – and therefore, more permanently enduring. He speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity, and beauty and pain. (Joseph Conrad)
The artist is not a special kind of man, but every man is a special kind of artist. (Ananda Coomaraswamy)
When I look at Art, I see a life. (Sharon Cory)
It is the consistent act of painting or drawing that creates an artist - the painting is only the bi-product. (Carol Cottone-Kolthoff)
Authors are sometimes like tomcats: They distrust all the other toms but they are kind to kittens. (Malcolm Cowley)
That is what the title of artist means: one who perceives more than his fellows, and who records more than he has seen. (Edward G. Craig)
What the artist owes the world is his work; not a model for living. (Harry Crews)
We're all thieves, really, trying futilely to steal these visual moments out of the rush of time. The result, a static object, is never that living image but something else entirely. Art is that passionate failure. (Warren Criswell)
If you're truly obsessed with a problem in your work, some part of your brain will be gnawing away at it all the time. In some sense, then, artists are always working, even when they're not. (Mason Currey)
- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory...
We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams. (Roald Dahl)
For me there is no gap between my painting and my so-called 'decorative' work. I never considered the 'minor arts' to be artistically frustrating; on the contrary, it was an extension of my art. (Sonia Delaunay)
The artist, a traveller on this earth, leaves behind imperishable traces of his being. (Francois Delsarte)
Knowledge, possession, and control; there you have the artist. (Francois Delsarte)
Artists must know what they are doing and how they are going to do it, while allowing room for spirit and intuition to influence the creative experience. (Donald Demers)
As artists, we are privileged to fall in love over and over again. Each new piece bears the potential for that glorious intoxication – and for the paralysis of its glittering expectation. (Kim Denise)
Artists express their own soul through their paintings. It is, perhaps, an affirmation of who we really are--as art rarely lies. (Jack Dickerson)
My father didn't think being an artist was a respectable or worthy goal for a man. He hoped I would see my way to more serious work and would find myself turning towards medicine, law, or business. (Richard Diebenkorn)
Through all the world there goes one long cry from the heart of the artist: Give me leave to do my utmost. (Isak Dinesen)
He is a Patron who looks down, / With careless eyes on men who drown; / But if they chance to reach the land, / Encumbers them with helping hand (Austin Dobson)
We're always attracted to the edges of what we are, out by the edges where it's a little raw and nervy. (E. L. Doctorow)
What blessings artists have, to take time to paint in quiet gardens or in safe studios. (Bill Dolmage)
When a young artist is ready, one has to bring him into the limelight. (Placido Domingo)
An Artist is more than the person who puts brush to canvas, notes to page, clay to form, etc. An Artist is an actual State of Being, one that moves both inside and outside the realms of a studio or creative work. It is a way of living, of perceiving, and most of all, of sharing. (Patrice Donnelly)
Living a life you want requires two things. Passion and skill. Preferably together on a canvas. (Karen L. Dortschy)
We can only be what we are! (David Dory)
Artists are similar to politicians in real life, but rather than giving promises they offer insight. (David Dory)
In my day artists wanted to be outcasts, pariahs. Now they are all integrated into society. (Marcel Duchamp)
I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists. (Marcel Duchamp)
My parents are artists; in their world, in the world of modern artists, you are supposed to just go into your studio and tune everything out, and your entire relationship with your work is supposed to be a super private one. That was the way to do it and you weren't deeply truly artistic if that wasn't the way you were engaging the press. (Lena Dunham)
For us artists there waits the joyous compromise through art, with all that has wounded or defeated us in daily life... not to evade destiny, as the ordinary people try to do, but to fulfil it in its true potential – the imagination. (Lawrence Durrell)
We artists are the true makers of reality, for it is we who are at the nexus of any expression of newness. For everything you see that is man-made has an artist at its beginnings. (Nic East)
I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. (Albert Einstein)
After a certain high level of technical skill is achieved, science and art tend to coalesce in esthetics, plasticity, and form. The greatest scientists are artists as well. (Albert Einstein)
We artists, being able to escape back into our art and for a brief moment forget our troubles, have saved our lives and kept our slippery grip on our sanity. (Patti Eldridge)
To an artist, a picture is both a sum of ideas and a blurry memory of 'pushing paint,' breathing fumes, dripping oils and wiping brushes, smearing and diluting and mixing. (James Elkins)
The artist must say it without saying it. (Duke Ellington)
Every artist writes his own autobiography. (Havelock Ellis)
The true artist has the planet for his pedestal; the adventurer, after years of strife, has nothing broader than his shoes. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
The artists must be sacrificed to their art. Like the bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
I think most artists would be happy to have bigger audiences rather than smaller ones. It doesn't mean that they are going to change their work in order necessarily to get it, but they're happy if they do get it. (Brian Eno)
One of the things you're doing when you make art, apart from entertaining yourself and other people, is trying to see what ways of working feel good, what feels right. (Brian Eno)
The artist is the world's scapegoat. (Jacob Epstein)
As artists we must look at the outside world with foreign eyes. (Chantell Van Erbe)
Not only can we create art, art creates us. (Maria Eskenasy)
I think the popular concept of the artist is a person who has this great passion and enthusiasm and super emotion. He just throws himself into this great masterpiece and collapses from exhaustion when it's finished. It's really not that way at all. (Richard Estes)
Whether he is an artist or not, the photographer is a joyous sensualist, for the simple reason that the eye traffics in feelings, not in thoughts. (Walker Evans)
Each artist is simply the last in a long tradition combining the conventional and the avant-garde, the classical and the romantic, the blending of style according to that one very particular individual - the artist himself. (Chris Everest)
The wonder is that artists can stimulate other artists. (Nick Farbacher)
An artist is a creature driven by demons – he usually doesn't know why they chose him and he's usually too busy to wonder why. (William Faulkner)
What artists have accomplished is realizing there's only a small amount of stuff that's important and then seeing what it was. (Mitchell Feigenbaum)
What is an artist? A provincial who finds himself somewhere between a physical reality and a metaphysical one... It's this in-between that I'm calling a province, this frontier country between the tangible world and the intangible one - which is really the realm of the artist. (Federico Fellini)
All artists are equal when they are themselves. (Federico Fellini)
I hear artists say that they only do it for themselves; they're not concerned with what people think. To me, they're either lying or idiots. (Max Ferguson)
Becoming an artist is about developing a dialogue between what you are communicating and what you're absorbing from your surroundings. (John Ferrie)
The ups and downs make you who you are. There's no end game here; there's no pot of gold waiting. It's really just knowing that I lived my life as an artist and that I did it on my own terms. And I get to keep the lights on for another day. (Peter Fiore)
An artist is someone who can hold two opposing viewpoints and still remain fully functional. (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
It is a calling. Artists do what they do because they have to. When you work as an artist you touch your destiny. Art is a continuous discovery of reality. (Audrey Flack)
The artist must be in his work as God is in creation, invisible and all-powerful; one must sense him everywhere but never see him. (Gustave Flaubert)
Caught up in life, you see it badly. You suffer from it or enjoy it too much. The artist, in my opinion, is a monstrosity, something outside of nature. (Gustave Flaubert)
Each day in the life of an artist is new and exciting. Breathe in the love of life, the knowledge that today you have the freedom to paint and create... breathe in the joy of being an artist. (Gwen Fox)
-misattributed, composed by Louis Nizer, and published in his book, Between You and Me, 1948...
He who works with his hands is a laborer. He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman. He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist. (St. Francis of Assisi)
Art has a will of its own. It has nothing to do with the taste of the moment or what's expected of you. That's a formula for dead art, or fashionable art. (Helen Frankenthaler)
Our creative lives involve continually balancing fear of the blank page and busyness of life with the joy of creating. (Nina Allen Freeman)
Our task is not to make an amazing thing called art. Our task is to get a thrill from what
we see. When we are moved, we will move others. (Jerry Fresia)
The character of the artist doesn't enter into the nature of the art. Eliot said that art is the escape from personality. We know that Velazquez embezzled money from the Spanish court and wanted power and so on, but you can't see this in his art. (Lucian Freud)
The best thing about being an artist is that it is not just the work but a state of being... viewing the world in terms of visual dynamics. (Karen Frey)
Throughout all the painting days, the artist never forgot that Sister Howells' last act on earth, the night she died, was to arrange for the sale of some property to pay for the project. (Arnold Friberg)
The artist's view of the world and mankind is that which seeks as far as possible to lose itself in its object, illuminating it not from the outside by some light foreign to it, but from within, deriving light from its own core. (Egon Friedell)
There are two very different types of artists: those I call Old Masters, who work by trial and error and tend to improve with age, and conceptual people, or Young Geniuses, who generally do their best work early in their careers. (David Galenson)
There are clear differences between child and adult artistic activity. While the child may be aware that he is doing things differently from others, he does not fully appreciate the rules and conventions of symbolic realms; his adventurousness holds little significance. In contrast, the adult artist is fully cognizant of the norms embraced by others; his willingness, his compulsion, to reject convention is purchased, at the very least, with full knowledge of what he is doing and often at considerable psychic cost to himself. (Howard Gardner)
The artist is not a neurotic. To be an artist is a guarantee of sanity. (Paul Gardner, arts writer)
Artists are, by nature and necessity, solitary souls. (Ann Richmond Garlough)
To be an artist is to take responsibility for the world's destiny. You shape it by your vision. (Laurence Gartel)
Being an artist means ceasing to take seriously that very serious person we are when we are not an artist. (Jose Ortega Y Gasset)
The great artist is a formulation of the greatest intelligence: he is the recipient of sensations which are the most delicate and consequently the most invisible expressions of the brain. (Paul Gauguin)
Artists... do not need the applause or condemnation of the critics, the ideas of other artists, or the demands of the collectors. (Robert Genn)
Artists don't retire – they can't – otherwise they're not artists. (Don Getz)
Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love. (Kahlil Gibran)
Just because creativity is mystical doesn't mean it shouldn't also be demystified - especially if it means liberating artists from the confines of their own grandiosity, panic, and ego. (Elizabeth Gilbert)
The artist is not a different kind of person, but every person is a different kind of artist. (Eric Gill)
We eat up artists like there's going to be a famine at the end. (Nikki Giovanni)
An artist needn't be a clergyman or a churchwarden, but he certainly must have a warm heart for his fellow men. (Vincent van Gogh)
There really is no such thing as Art. There are only artists. (Ernst Gombrich)
All men are creative but few are artists. (Paul Goodman)
An artist is a prophet and seer, not a paint craftsman or design maker, or reporter or entertainer... the artist has the superiorly searching perception with which that world outside of man's contamination can be penetrated and the truth drawn out from it. (Morris Graves)
Artists create out of a sense of desolation. The spirit of creation is a excruciating, intricate exploration from within the soul. (El Greco)
We artists need to be eagles and not sparrows. It is the eagle that soars high above and alone... (Brad Greek)
Don't call yourself an artist. Let others name you that. 'Artist' is a title of great weight. (Irwin Greenberg)
We are image-makers and image-ridden... We work until we vanish. (Philip Guston)
Many works of the past (and of the present) complete what they announce they are going to do, to our increasing boredom. Certain others plague me because I cannot follow their intentions. I can tell at a glance what Fabritius is doing, but I am spending my life trying to find out what Rembrandt was up to. (Philip Guston)
We all strive to become better artists technically, but it's the honesty of our personal language that truly captivates the viewer. No other artist sees the world exactly as I do or feels what I feel. Only I can share my story. (Nancy Guzik)
Through photography, both artist and scientist can find a common denominator in their search for the synthesis of modern vision in time, space and structure. (Ernst Haas)
I just make stuff that transports me to a happier place where I can hum and whistle. Art can do that. (Joel Haas)
We're here to bring beauty to the world and make a difference in this planet. That's what art forms are about. (Charlie Haden)
Every true artist reaches into his soul and creates something that is very much a part of himself. (Hap Hagood)
An artist's job is to show people what was always there but they never noticed. (Andrew Hamilton)
I would have been an artist even if I'd been something else; I just couldn't stop doing that. Young artists get caught up in the idea that you can only paint when you're 'inspired.' (Steve Hanks)
We are ultimately defined and designed by the artist from within and without. (Charly Hansen)
- in a letter to his sister at the end of his life...
I am not a 'book of the month' artist, and I do not paint pretty pictures; but when I am no longer here my name will register forever in the history of American art. (Marsden Hartley)
If we are to change our world view, images have to change. The artist now has a very important job to do. He's not a little peripheral figure entertaining rich people, he's really needed. (Vaclav Havel)
The main difference between the average person and the 'Artist' is the focused drive. An Artist is driven sometimes to the exclusion of all else... often has to be reminded to join the rest of the world once in a while. (Sandra Taylor Hedges)
When the artist is alive in any person... he becomes an inventive, searching, daring, self-expressing creature. He becomes interesting to other people. He disturbs, upsets, enlightens, and he opens ways for better understanding. (Robert Henri)
An artist's job is to surprise himself. Use all means possible. (Robert Henri)
The real artist's work is a surprise to himself. (Robert Henri)
Most of the people involved in any art secretly wonder whether they are really there because they're good – or because they're lucky. (Katharine Hepburn)
- from a conversation with J.P. Hodin, 18 August, 1959...
The work of the artist today springs from innate impulses towards life, towards growth - impulses whose rhythms and structures have to do with the power and insistence of life. (Barbara Hepworth)
I am not an artist and never have been. Rather I am like a craftsman and feel very close to the mediaeval artisans who produced their work anonymously and who, along with their apprentices, had a true feeling for the physical materials they were working with. (Werner Herzog)
The attitude and reactions of artists toward their art children reveal an attitude similar to that which mothers in general possess toward their children. There is the same sensitivity to any criticism, the same possessive pride... (Beatrice Hinkle)
I'm aware of being a stranger, an outsider, and that's always an advantage for an artist. It means I can see from the inside and the outside. I have that double vision. (John Hirsch)
Artists are just children who refuse to put down their crayons. (Al Hirschfeld)
You know, it's no accident that the great painters came from areas like Europe where there is a lot of clouds and rain, which begets color and subtle washes of tone. Most great graphic artists come from areas with prevalent sun, where line and shadow are paramount. (Al Hirschfeld)
Artists are like everybody else. (Damien Hirst)
What an artist is trying to do for people is bring them closer to something, because of course art is about sharing: you wouldn't be an artist if you didn't want to share an experience, a thought. (David Hockney)
We need all kinds of artists. We have no need to destroy drawing. We lose so much. This wouldn't happen in music. (David Hockney)
The artist is born, and art is the expression of his overflowing soul. Because his soul is rich, he cares comparatively little about the superficial necessities of the material world; he sublimates the pressure of material affairs in an artistic experience. (Hans Hofmann)
There are four artists: There is the artist you think you are, the artist you wish you were, the artist you want others to think you are, and the artist that you are. If you spend too much time thinking about all this, you may never find out who the last one is! (Susan Holland)
Artists are good at reflecting what's around, and this is a time for reflection and reflecting if there ever was one. (Jenny Holzer)
Artists should not try to be pure. They should get their hands and their souls a little dirty by plunging into the world full force. (Steve Hovland)
Scratch an artist and you will surprise a child. (James G. Huneker)
What the rest of us see only under the influence of mescalin, the artist is congenitally equipped to see all the time. (Aldous Huxley)
Every significant artist is a metaphysician, a propounder of beauty-truths and form-theories. (Aldous Huxley)
-on Ala Bashir, Iraqi artist and physician...
The artist, surgeon, through clay form, can only look for cure with great obstinacy until he discovers, repeatedly, that love is god's only gift that enables man to transcend his tragedy and regain his wholeness and well-being beyond the claws of evil, rampaging as evil may be. (Jabra Ibrahim Jabra)
Art is a point of view, and a genius way of looking at things. (Henry James)
Real artists ship. (Steve Jobs)
Artists - musicians, painters, writers, poets, always seem to have had the most accurate perception of what is really going on around them, not the official version or the popular perception of contemporary life. (Billy Joel)
Musicians want to be the loud voice for so many quiet hearts. (Billy Joel)
Perhaps all artists were, in a sense, housewives: tenders of the earth household. (Erica Jong)
The artistic formulae wear thin quickly and yet daily the artist - when developing his own foundation - must enter his own time and the problems of other contemporary artists. Paths cross and the soil of time is starting to be turned. (Asger Jorn)
The artist, like the God of creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails. (James Joyce)
As a human being the artist may have many moods and a will and personal aims, but as an artist he is 'man' in a higher sense – he is 'collective man' – one who carries and shapes the unconscious, psychic life of mankind. (Carl Gustav Jung)
We need that metaphysical wizard, the Artist, in society to transmute what is commonplace and ordinary into a more meaningful and heightened human experience. (Alar Jurma)
I value those artists who embody the expression of their life. (Wassily Kandinsky)
Artists don't make objects. Artists make mythologies. (Anish Kapoor)
Artist refers to a person, willfully enmeshed in a dilemma of categories, who performs as if none of them existed. (Allan Kaprow)
There are very few artists who can afford to be true to themselves. (Judy Kardosh)
I thought to be an artist you had to be a genius or something. It was that 19th century idea... but with hard work, I got to be good. (Alex Katz)
In a free society art is not a weapon... Artists are not engineers of the soul. (John F. Kennedy)
Modesty, among artists, is almost always a liability. (Philip Kennicott)
Not all of us are painters but we are all artists. Each time we fit things together we are creating - whether it is to make a loaf of bread, a child, a day. (Corita Kent)
To capture through art a fragment of our collective experience. To discover deep meaning and deep thought, the joy of creative expression. We move through life with grace, ethics and spirituality, and relearn daily through our art to cherish humanity and our natural world. (Valerie Kent)
As artists, it is essential that we be constantly expanding our minds, especially where our creative skills are concerned. (Daniel J. Keys)
-on Lucian Freud, The New York Times...
There was always the work. Sometimes he succeeded at it, sometimes not. That's the fate of every great artist and any good one. (Michael Kimmelman)
If we can't, as artists, improve on real life, we should put down our pencils and go bake bread. (Barbara Kingsolver)
The concept that an artist would be revered by popular culture is an immediate dismissal of his relevance as an artist. (Thomas Kinkade)
A Good artist has less time than ideas. (Martin Kippenberger)
If you look to artists who've managed to achieve lifelong careers, you detect the same pattern: They all have been able to persevere, regardless of success or failure. (Austin Kleon)
We dream, we solve problems, and we seek: art is not just a life vocation for the truly driven but can be an enjoyable pastime for others. How is that not positive? (Jackie Knott)
Artists are like cockroaches; everything is grist for the mill. (Elaine de Kooning)
An artist is someone who makes art... He didn't invent it... (Willem de Kooning)
I try to be a truthful artist and show a level of courage. I enjoy that. I'm a messenger. (Jeff Koons)
As a comic book artist, once you become a master, you end up a slave. In fine art you're always free... since I couldn't make it at Marvel, I made my life a carnival. (Mark Kostabi)
So much of what we do as artists is a combination of personal experience and imagination, and how that all creeps into your work is not so linear. (Diana Krall)
I have never been able to understand the artist whose image never changes. (Lee Krasner)
Only he is an artist who can make a riddle out of a solution. (Karl Kraus)
I just say I'm an artist who works with pictures and words. (Barbara Kruger)
We have to forget the black side of life. If our art is black, that means we are stopped. We are not doing our job as artists. (Reem Kubaa)
To be an artist means never to avert one's eyes. (Akira Kurosawa)
Artists paint not for their own enjoyment but to share their vision with others. (John Kurtz)
To understand an artist is to be a genius. (Andrew Lakey)
Seeing is more than a physiological phenomenon... We see not only with our eyes but with all that we are and all that our culture is. The artist is a professional see-er. (Dorothea Lange)
The real gift that artists are given is not the technical skills that are learned and honed, but those moments of clarity when we connect with something only we are allowed to see. (Mary Lapos)
An artist is only an ordinary man with a greater potentiality. (D. H. Lawrence)
My job is to 'see' the landscape for others - to absorb the spirit of the land - and then to communicate it to them. When the viewer feels something in response, I know I have succeeded. (Brent R. Laycock)
If we artists are to survive this period at all – we will survive as spokesmen, never again as entertainers. (Rico Lebrun)
Artists are crystals, most often refusing to be defined by mainstream society. Crystals tend to be vibrant, dynamic, awake and not lost in the 'waking sleep' stupor that seems to be overtaking our world at an alarming rate. (Lyn Lecuyer)
From an artist's point of view, I always want to work with the writers I admire. (Jim Lee)
The true artist paints for himself. (A. C. Leighton)
In order to be artists we need to be in our studios, in our private rooms... in our private personal space... that sacred protected space, so we can make our work. That's the only work that's worth making, right? That's the place where we can be free enough and vulnerable enough to share what we have to share. (Adam Leipzig)
I don't think painters are very useful people. Out of the whole art gang - writers, composers, musicians, architects - painters are the dullest of the lot: very poor company. (Robert Lenkiewicz)
The life, no matter how traumatic, never explains the work, if the work is any good. (John Leonard, critic)
The artist must / create himself or be born again. (Denise Levertov)
Every poet and musician and artist, but for grace, is drawn away from love of the things he tells to love of the telling... (C. S. Lewis)
In other countries, art and literature are left to a lot of shabby bums living in attics and feeding on booze and spaghetti, but in America the successful writer or picture-painter is indistinguishable from any other decent business man. (Sinclair Lewis)
Artists put as much vitality and delight into their saintliness and escape out as most men do their escapes into similar places from respectable existence. (Wyndham Lewis)
I am an artist, and, through my eye, must confess to a tremendous bias. In my purely literary voyages my eye is always my compass. (Wyndham Lewis)
A blind man can make art if what is in his mind can be passed to another mind in some tangible form. (Sol LeWitt)
You really can't function as a celebrity. Entertainers are celebrities. I'm an architect. I'm an artist, I make things. (Maya Lin)
Our job as artists is to see through our imaginary identities, which cause ourselves and others so much pain, release them through that seeing, and become one with the All. In that oneness, through that oneness, a wholeness speaks through our hands and voices. (Jeanne Long)
Dead he is not, but departed, for the artist never dies. (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)
As an artist - I'm sure like most creative people - you have a kind of board of directors that you make your work for. It's a group of people that you have, these friends, and you want to know what they think. In a weird way, you're making the work for them. (Robert Longo)
Exercising the social contract between the citizen and state, the artist works as citizen within the intimate spaces of community life. (Yolanda Lopez)
Take what is in your mind. Process it through your heart. It comes out through your hands - Art. (Lena Lucas)
Like books, artists have their fates. (Norbert Lynton)
You must offer the flowers of the art that is in you - the symbols of all that is noble - and beautiful - and inspiring - flowers that will often change a colourless leaf - into an established and thoughtful thing. (Charles Rennie Mackintosh)
Artists are those who have instinctively known the concept of Plato's shadow on the cave wall, and they're trying to look past the shadows to find the object standing between it and the light. (Cyd Madsen)
With the pride of the artist, you must blow against the walls of every power that exists the small trumpet of your defiance. (Norman Mailer)
Artists disbelieve and dispute society's most cherished notions. (Eric Maisel)
As an artist your trajectory just has to keep going up. The thing that subverts your next body of work is the work you've taken before. (Sally Mann)
We can categorically state that the primary funder of artistic practices in Canada is the artists themselves. (Michael Maranda)
Remember that an artist's life is an intense search for truth. This search takes many forms. Everyone of these forms demands its own disciplines. I learned and adapted to my search. I expect nothing from you. Question the truth of anything you confront. How does it apply to yourself and the trail you are pursuing? (Brice Marden)
I think art comes from some sense of discomfort with the world, some sense of not quite fitting with it. (Yann Martel)
Drawing is as much about the artist as it is about what is being drawn, and it may on occasion tell you more about the artist's state of mind, level of understanding, etc., than it does about the subject matter. (Mick Maslen)
A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What one can be, one must be. (Abraham Maslow)
Artists, go with what knowledge you now possess, step into your own path of creativity and you will find you will continue to grow and touch the true artist within. (Billie F. Mathis)
The artist produces for the liberation of his soul. It is his nature to create as it is the nature of water to run downhill. (W. Somerset Maugham)
- The Courage to Create...
Artists do not run away from non-being, but by encountering and wrestling with it, force it to produce being. (Rollo May)
Invariably, at some point in his/her art career, an artist finds himself/herself on top of the Tower of Babel, alone, misunderstood but still free. (Doug Mays)
As visual artists, we draw our lyrics and paint our melodies. That's our music. (Doug Mays)
Being an artist is like wearing cruel shoes and loving it. (Cyn McCurry)
One is an artist not simply because one paints, but because one sees artistically, thinks artistically, and actually experiences life artistically. (Ronald Joyce McDowell)
For the mystic what is how. For the craftsman how is what. For the artist what and how are one. (William McElcheran)
To be an artist is to recognize the possibilities found in everyday sights and scenes. (Susan Morris McGee)
Artists make things so much easier for themselves when they learn to trust their eyes. (Mary Beth McKenzie)
The artist is a person who is expert in the training of perception. (Marshall McLuhan)
The world needs artists. We live in troubling times. Uplifting artwork puts people's attention on positive things and makes them feel good about being alive. (Scott Menaul)
The artist is not a reporter, but a Great Teacher. It is not his business to depict the world as it is, but as it ought to be. (H. L. Mencken)
The gifted artists are the great benefactors of the world. Life flows from their souls, from their hearts, from their fingers. They invite us to celebrate life and to meditate on the mystery of the world. They bring us back to the essential. (Dominique de Menil)
An artist must have his measuring tools not in the hand, but in the eye. (Michelangelo)
The arrogance of the artist is a very profound thing, and it fortifies you. (James A. Michener)
An artist earns the right to call himself a creator only when he admits to himself that he is but an instrument. (Henry Miller)
An artist is usually the handyman in the service of inspiration. (Kenneth G. Mills)
Virtually all of the artists I respect were the renegades of their periods. So, it remains, for my contemporaries. Being told I'm not doing it correctly just makes me smile, and say, 'Thank you!' (Damar Minyak)
A painting is not part of me. Because when I do paint, I am not aware of myself... It
is part of something else. Communication is very difficult. (Joan Mitchell)
The position of the artist is humble. He is essentially a channel. (Piet Mondrian)
As an artist, you reach for the pen that's full of blood. (Paul Monette)
All musicians are subconsciously mathematicians. (Thelonius Monk)
The world calls them its singers and poets and artists and storytellers; but they are just people who have never forgotten the way to fairyland. (Lucy Maud Montgomery)
I make art to stay in control of my cluttered life... It is the poets, musicians and writers who challenge me to express myself in paint. (Adrienne Moore)
Artists cannot always be visual advocates upon their own canvas. Sometimes, we respond by actions outside of art - to meet the same ends. (Brad Michael Moore)
To be an artist is to believe in life. (Henry Moore)
I do not subscribe to the theory of the artist as a sort of separate aesthetic being sitting in the ivory tower suffering and talking about beauty. It is work, it is hard work and there's a lot of it, and there's a lot of it that needs to be done, but that's exactly what it is. It is not sitting under willow trees and being inspired. (Toni Morrison)
The role of an artist is to awaken the deep life urge that is already in every person. (Ann Mortifee)
Australian Aborigines say that the big stories - the stories worth telling and retelling, the ones in which you may find the meaning of your life - are forever stalking the right teller, sniffing and tracking like predators hunting their prey in the bush. (Robert Moss)
Being an artist involves constantly exploring how to be creative. (Alfred Muma)
You have to understand your craft before you can be an artist. It's a real journey to become an artist. (C. W. Mundy)
Every artist is an unhappy lover. (Iris Murdoch)
I remind myself that traveling through life as an artist requires one to distill things slowly. To be inquisitive, inventive, and patient - a lot of things get discarded along the way. It's a little like boiling sea water to get at the salt. (James Nares)
I am no longer an artist interested and curious, I am a messenger who will bring back word from the men who are fighting to those who want the war to go on for ever. Feeble, inarticulate, will be my message, but it will have a bitter truth, and may it burn their lousy souls. (Paul Nash)
I guess I created LeRoy Neiman. Nobody else told me how to do it. Well, I'm a believer in the theory that the artist is as important as his work. (LeRoy Neiman)
Artists are problem solvers. They thrive on their ability to see, understand and visually render the realities of their external or internal world. (Richard (Dick) Nelson)
Aesthetics is for artists what ornithology is for birds. (Barnett Newman)
Artists speak to a different part of us, bypassing the cloudy filter of reason and the fears and prejudices of the habitual mind. (Wes Nisker)
Is it not the artist who - like our dreams - dissolves the pretenses that hide us from ourselves, disclosing both our self-serving fantasies and our unsuspected potentialities? (Dorothy Norman)
The artist belongs to his work, not the work to the artist. (Novalis)
The artist helps us to interpret, understand and communicate feeling. When the artist is successful we are led into communion with ourselves and with the world, and the solitary work becomes a communal work. For want of this we walk on parched land. (Elizabeth O'Connor)
An artist is his own fault. (John O'Hara)
Artists who dare to remain are at the helm of their own vessel, both steering and standing at the very bow where calm waters are broken and clarity is at its most pristine. We are the wake-makers. While we're making waves, they're surfing our chop. (Kevin Obregon)
We acknowledged and supported each other as artists when the world of fine art refused us entry... Together we broke down barriers that would have been so much more difficult faced alone. (Daphne Odjig)
Wholeness is the enemy of the artist. We ought to be broken, ruined in some way. (Ben Okri)
Artists should be self-aware of their work and their potential places in people's lives and make their decisions accordingly. (oliver)
Artists are going to be the metronome of this society. (Yoko Ono)
For one to call himself an artist, one has to take a leadership role. Not just merely producing art works, but producing art works which are backed by ideas and philosophies which are calculated to help upgrade and uplift the life of the people. (Bruce Onobrakpeya)
The artist must not love his own work too long. It isn't reasonable. He grows up every time. (Serguei Ouissik)
Each work of art is either inevitable or irrelevant. (Franco Paisio)
The title 'artist' can be an itchy one to wear, an ill-fitting hand-me-down title that seems as if it must have been made for someone else. (Judith Palmer)
Artists, like Olympic sprinters, are allowed only so many false starts before they're asked to leave the field. (Judith Palmer)
I don't think that art gets made with your hands. (Jorge Pardo)
-New York Times...
Artists are perceptive, but they choose to write songs or make movies or paint pictures rather than simply keeping private diaries. (Jon Pareles)
As artists get wealthier and more famous, often their work gets worse... I'm fascinated by the decline of artists. I suspect I'll be in decline myself. It's a fact of life. (Martin Parr)
Every artist is, first of all, a craftperson thoroughly knowledgeable about the materials, tools, and techniques of his or her particular medium and skilled in using many of them. (Freeman Patterson)
- Rooftop Soliloquy...
All forms of madness, bizarre habits, awkwardness in society, general clumsiness, are justified in the person who creates good art. (Roman Payne)
An artist may sustain a body of work as an ecosystem, in which every part is used to every advantage, not consuming any part without regenerating it. (Jan Peacock)
I am alive and outside is green and waiting. (Ross Penhall)
What we must do as artists is demonstrate the shared wholeness of the human condition to our audiences. (Nicholas Pennell)
There is no such thing as motivation in my world. I am not motivated to do what I do. As an artist, I am driven, I am compelled, I am thrust forward by a force so rooted inside me, so convincing, that it seems futile to try to explain it. Although it has a name: passion. (Philippe Petit)
The artist reserves the right to remove a blot on the landscape, to change positions of things, to suit his composition, providing only that he does not transgress the laws of probability. (Walter J. Phillips)
-this quote is in dispute: apparently the interview with Italian author, Giovanni Papini, never really happened...
Today, as you know, I am famous and very rich. But when I am alone with myself, I haven't the 'courage' to consider myself an artist, in the great and ancient sense of that word... I am only a public entertainer, who understands his age. (Pablo Picasso)
What do you think an artist is? An imbecile who has only his eyes if he is a painter, or his ears if he is a musician? ...On the contrary, he is at the same time a political being, constantly on the alert to the heart-rending, burning, or happy events in the world, molding himself in their likeness. (Pablo Picasso)
All things considered, there is only Matisse. (Pablo Picasso)
Art will not solve your problems. It will not enable you to live merrily. (Robert Pinsky)
A true artist doesn't change with the times. A true artist is already way ahead of the times. (Eric Pio)
If you think you are an artist you must be a fighter. Fight to shine and illuminate the world. (Todd Plough)
Visual art is a way of seeing and expressing that thing seen in a manner not given to everyone. That statement could be misconstrued as prideful, but anyone engaged in painting as a profession knows that isn't true. (Ed Pointer)
Every good artist paints what he is. (Jackson Pollock)
It ought to be illegal for an artist to marry. If the artist must marry let him find someone more interested in art, or his art, or the artist part of him, than in him. After which let them take tea together three times a week. (Ezra Pound)
Artists are modest. They know they're not doing the work; they're just taking dictation. (Steven Pressfield)
The primary difference that I see between commercial art and fine art is that commercial artists have parameters and specifications set out by someone else, and are motivated by schedules and profit. Fine artists are generally motivated by our own choice of subject and limited only by our mastery of the medium and creativity. The concept of profit, or actually being paid for something we enjoy creating, seems to be a grey area... (John Stuart Pryce)
More and more people are becoming artists. There is a need to make your voice heard in this age where we are becoming less and less empowered. (Henryk Ptasiewicz)
I do not wish to be an artist. I only wish that art enables me to be. (Noah Purifoy)
Artists who speak negatively about commercial success never had any. (Bob Ragland)
The task of the artist at any time is uncompromisingly simple – to discover what has not yet been done, and to do it. (Craig Raine)
- Half Empty...
The only thing that makes one an artist is making art. And that requires the precise opposite of hanging out; a deeply lonely and unglamorous task of tolerating oneself long enough to push something out. (David Rakoff)
The artist's job is to be a witness to his time in history. (Robert Rauschenberg)
I submit that the artist who gets out of the studio and connects with galleries, art dealers, famous collectors and makes himself a likable character in a genuine way, stands more of a chance of success than the introverted but wildly talented artist who doesn't like socializing. I sympathize. (Liz Reday)
The Artist submits from day to day to the fatal rhythm of the impulses of the universal world which encloses him, continual centre of sensations, always pliant, hypnotized by the marvels of nature which he loves, he scrutinizes. His eyes, like his soul, are in perpetual communion with the most fortuitous of phenomena. (Odilon Redon)
For those fortunate enough to be able to make a living in the arts, sometimes we need take a step back and realize how blessed we are. (William F. Reese)
- Celebration of the Raven, 1981...
But I didn't think about this beforehand. I just went ahead and did it, and that's the way it turned out. So I guess there are lots of paradoxes which I'll leave for other people to unscramble. (Bill Reid)
We all name ourselves. We call ourselves artists. Nobody asks us. Nobody says you are or you aren't. (Ad Reinhardt)
God, the king of artists, was clumsy. (Pierre-Auguste Renoir)
There's something peculiar about artists. They have ups and downs... After a while everything you do is just wonderful... then you slide back. If you're a good artist you're going to go down. And then it's up to you. (Milton Resnick)
Artists occupy a position of fascination for the rest of the world. (Alice Rich)
Artists want encouragement, recognition, respect and confidence. (Alice Rich)
Now there are no priests or philosophers left, artists are the most important people in the world. (Gerhard Richter)
The abstract artist utilizes the basic rules of design, composition, color to create something new from within. (CJ Rider)
The mission of the artist in an over-technologized society is to call the old magic back to life. (Tom Robbins)
An artist sees by observing the relationships of color, value, shape and texture, which is very different from how most people look at the world. (Richard Robinson)
The secret to so many artists living so long is that every painting is a new adventure. So, you see, they're always looking ahead to something new and exciting. The secret is not to look back. (Norman Rockwell)
The artist is the confidant of nature; flowers carry on dialogues with him through the graceful bending of their stems and the harmoniously tinted nuances of their blossoms. Every flower has a cordial word which nature directs toward him. (Auguste Rodin)
Every time an artist dies, part of the vision of mankind passes with him. (Franklin D. Roosevelt)
Artists - by definition innocent - don't steal. But they do borrow without giving back. (Ned Rorem)
The aim of every authentic artist is not to conform to the history of art, but to release himself from it in order to replace it with his own history. (Harold Rosenberg)
The artist does not exist except as a personification, a figure of speech that represents the sum total of art itself. It is painting that is the genius of the painter, poetry of the poet, and a person is a creative artist to the extent that he participates in that genius. (Harold Rosenberg)
I think being an artist is having the courage to be original. Many great artists, including Picasso, have all been influenced by the great master paintings... And then finally, they leap, they take off... they become themselves. Then it looks like they just came out of nowhere. Just like 'Pow!' (James Rosenquist)
We artists are a different breed of people. We're a happy bunch. (Bob Ross)
We are rained on, sunburned, fall off large rocks, get wet and acquire colds. We travel long distances for the 'right spot'; lose the light much too quickly; suffer neglect and rejection and self-doubt. We are windswept and spend more money on supplies than we will ever recover. We lose friends, models, spouses and loved ones... Ah! ain't life grand for an artist? (Rick Rotante)
Nothing has a more sinister effect on art than the artist's desire to prove that he's good. The terrible temptation of idealism! (Philip Roth)
Subjective artists are one-eyed, but objective artists are blind. (Georges Rouault)
It's interesting to see the world's fascination with a troubled artist. The artists sure wouldn't share their enthusiasm. (Jim Rowe)
All people the relatives. But, the largest relatives in the mankind are the artists – they, in addition, are spiritual relatives and speaking on same language of fine art. (Yaroslaw Rozputnyak)
I'm just a simple man standing alone with my old brushes, asking God for inspiration. (Peter Paul Rubens)
When we see ourselves as artists, we no longer feel the need to impose our story on others or to defend what we believe. We know that all artists have the right to create their own art. (Don Miguel Ruiz)
Every human is an artist. The dream of your life is to make beautiful art. (Don Miguel Ruiz)
God, the supreme artist, uses our life for the creation of art. We are the instruments through which the force of life expresses itself. (Don Miguel Ruiz)
Inside you there's an artist you don't know about... (Rumi)
An artist has to shift for himself and do his own thinking. (Carl Rungius)
What distinguishes a great artist from a weak one is first their sensibility and tenderness; second, their imagination, and third, their industry. (Salman Rushdie)
A man is born an artist as a hippopotamus is born a hippopotamus; and you can no more make yourself one than you can make yourself a giraffe. (John Ruskin)
Artists make art... everyone else talks about it. (Paul Russo)
Every garden-maker should be an artist along his own lines. That is the only possible way to create a garden, irrespective of size or wealth. (Vita Sackville-West)
In the fabric of space and in the nature of matter, as in a great work of art, there is, written small, the artist's signature. (Carl Sagan)
An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's. (J. D. Salinger)
After too much art that made too much sense, artists are operating blind again. They're more interested in the possible than the probable, the private that speaks publicly rather than the public with no private side at all. (Jerry Saltz)
Being an artist... made me realize that I wasn't built for the type of loneliness that comes from art. Art is slow, physical, resistant, material-based, and involves an ongoing commitment to doing the same thing differently over and over again in the studio. (Jerry Saltz)
An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world. (George Santayana)
The health and vitality of art is exclusively dependent on the bottom of the food chain. It relies first and foremost on the artists, who reflect on the world and the time we live in, and secondarily, on institutions, organizations, and galleries that have the passion and foresight to support them. (Magda Sawon)
Artists paint pictures. The best artists paint pictures for children's books. (Richard Scarry)
To restrict the artist is a crime. It is to murder germinating life. (Egon Schiele)
An artist, in my experience, is a man or woman of unusual talent and peculiar, highly individual sensibility, with an independent and probably contrary mind, driven by mysterious passions for which another word is neurosis. In getting from point A to point B, the neurotic goes via point Q. It's in that roundabout that people are either completely crippled and hopeless in life, or highly creative. (Peter Schjeldahl)
An artist is he for whom the goal and center of life is to form his mind. (Friedrich Von Schlegel)
What men are among the other formations of the earth, artists are among men. (Friedrich Von Schlegel)
What sets you apart from the rest of humanity is your ability to give visual form to an idea - the skill to transform it into something more than merely the insight or perception alone. (Richard Schmid)
To send light into the darkness of men's hearts - such is the duty of the artist. (Robert Schumann)
For anyone who dreams of making movies or who is just starting out, the situation at this moment is brutal and inhospitable to art. And the act of simply writing those words fills me with terrible sadness. (Martin Scorsese)
We bring vast imagination and fantasy to people, a reminder to keep going, even when people say we live in another world and our feet are not on the ground. A good response is, 'Well, my world is rather nice - why don't you visit it sometime?' (Corrie Scott)
I look at my paintings for a very long time before letting them out of my studio. I like to get on the treadmill and look around at all of my paintings while I exercise. I try to stare them down to make them reveal their weaknesses. If they reveal weaknesses, they get repainted. (Sean Scully)
For an artist, the production of satisfying art can be like bearing a child; perhaps easily conceived but often painful in deliverance. (Ian Semple)
As artists we are psychological and emotional guides. Viewers are escorted by elements of design through each work but, ultimately, they must forge their own paths and make discoveries based upon their own realities. (Eric Serritella)
There are many 'types' of artists: those who consider themselves professional, with deadlines, who produce on time with or without inspiration; those who understand what it takes to 'prompt' their inspiration; those who indulge in 'paralysis of analysis' etc... (Robert Sesco)
An artist is no bigger than the size of his mind. (Jack Shadbolt)
I have come to see that an artist is not given a form – a style – but his nature merely gives him the ingredients wherewith to shape an equation of life. (Jack Shadbolt)
The artist is likely to be looked upon with some uneasiness by the more conservative members of society. (Ben Shahn)
All Artists are Anarchists. (George Bernard Shaw)
The artist must be ecstatic about something. (Ted Shawn)
Poets, not otherwise than philosophers, painters, sculptors, and musicians, are, in one sense, the creators, and, in another, the creations, of their age. (Percy Bysshe Shelley)
You can look at a lot of works done by black artists and see that we are trying to reimagine ourselves and identity. (Amy Sherald)
I don't care about an artist's rhetoric, philosophy, biography or fame... I only care about how well an artist can paint, and if I like what he or she paints. Feel free to judge me by the same standards. (Tom Shropshire)
I choose to reflect the times and the situations in which I find myself. How can you be an artist and not reflect the times? (Nina Simone)
The true artist is not interested in having a nice life, being comfy or fitting in, but rather sees himself as a benefactor. His goal is to make a contribution to life, and to this end there are no barriers, doors or blocks, but only wide open spaces. (Brian Simons)
Art pulls a community together... Art makes you feel differently. That's what artists are doing all the time, shifting and changing the way you see life. (Lister Sinclair)
What an artist is for is to tell us what we see but do not know that we see. (Edith Sitwell)
Artists are the people that no matter what, pick up the pen, pick up a paintbrush. They take the time to translate what is happening to create something that resonates deeply with the rest of the people that are caught in the middle of their own reality. (Anna Deavere Smith)
The artist has been the element of nature, and the arbiter of nature; he who has sat on a cloud and viewed it from afar, but at the same time has identified himself as one of nature's parts. (David Smith)
The artist should be a seeing-eye dog for a myopic civilization. (Jacob Getlar Smith)
Artists need to liberate themselves to dig deeper for a more meaningful art. We are the voice for the unspoken. (Libbie Soffer)
One doesn't need to know the artist's private intentions. The work tells all. (Susan Sontag)
If you're an artist, you try to keep an ear to the ground and an ear to your heart. (Bruce Springsteen)
The artist is an educator of artists of the future... (Saul Steinberg)
There is no one harder to live with than an artist. Therefore an artist is a real gift because he or she raises the sanctity of everyone else in the community. (David Steindl-Rast)
The genuine artist is never 'true to life.' He sees what is real, but not as we are normally aware of it. We do not go storming through life like actors in a play. Art is never real life. (Wallace Stevens)
- The Agony and the Ecstasy...
One should not become an artist because he can, but because he must. It is only for those who would be miserable without it. (Irving Stone)
What is an artist? For every thousand people there's nine hundred doing the work, ninety doing well, nine doing good, and one lucky bastard who's the artist. (Tom Stoppard)
My dear Tristan, to be an artist at all is like living in Switzerland during a world war. (Tom Stoppard)
Part of what we admire about a painting or a piece of music is the order which the artist has imposed upon what would otherwise have appeared disconnected or chaotic. (Anthony Storr)
Art postulates communion, and the artist has an imperative need to make others share the joy which he experiences himself. (Igor Stravinsky)
All artists are illusionists of one kind or another. (Mike Svob)
All my Artworks are the masterpiece of my immaterial mind. (Massimo Taccon)
I believe there is little to gain by exchanging opinions with other artists concerning either the ideology of art or technical methods. Very much alone in my work, I am almost jealous of it. Geography has no bearing on it, nor have the interests of the community in which I work. (Yves Tanguy)
Art has always been the raft onto which we climb to save our sanity. I don't see a different purpose for it now. (Dorothea Tanning)
Creatives are feared and ridiculed... and at the same time highly valued for their ability to see things that others do not. (Janice Tanton)
The artist may rightly venture the opinion that he does not convey ideas, does not preach, nor does he intend to convert people by using mass communication techniques... Better than handing out all kinds of wise advice, he could show life itself; he could awake forces lying dormant in everybody. He could launch an invitation to create direct and personal experiences. (Antoni Tapies)
Artists are never complete people. But if it's art that completes them, then what is taken away? (Alexander Theroux)
An artist needs the best studio instruction, the most rigorous demands, and the toughest criticism in order to tune up his sensibilities. (Wayne Thiebaud)
Even if you are not an artist nor ever expect to become an artist, if you can learn to see like an artist, your life will forever change. (Tommy Thompson)
When somebody produces something which is deemed art, they are denoted an artist. Some poor souls subsequently suffer from the delusion that anything and everything they then do is also worth to be called art. (Billy Childish and Charles Thomson)
We have all just begun to scratch the surface of what it means to be an artist. (Aleksander Titovets)
Art is a microscope which the artist fixes on the secrets of his soul, and shows to people these secrets which are common to all. (Leo Tolstoy)
It takes an artist to show us the beauty that is always there. (Julie Trail)
Most people view the artistic process as something of a mystery. Leverage that, and engage your prospective clients with good stories. For many, buying art is their escape from the real world. Make it entertaining and enjoyable. (Cory Trepanier)
The worst scientist is he who is not an artist; the worst artist is he who is no scientist. (Armand Trousseau)
Their [artists] essential effort is to catapult themselves wholly, without holding back one bit, into a course of action without having any idea where they will end up. They are like riders who gallop into the night, eagerly leaning on their horse's neck, peering into a blinding rain. And they have to do it over and over again. (Anne Truitt)
Artists make a living exchanging something that has no value for something that might. (Stewart Turcotte)
I look at a lot of artists I'm inspired by - I suppose I shouldn't say 'inspired,' but it's not really influenced. I am inspired. (Cy Twombly)
Artists are the froth on the waves of civilization. (Author unknown)
Since the earliest times - from the cave artists to the modern painters - artists have enriched the plastic vocabulary and each generation of man has seen through the eyes of the artists of the preceding generation. (Author unknown)
We didn't choose to create art - it chose us. (Author unknown)
When everyone is an artist, no one is an artist. (Author unknown)
Too many artists are trying to be the artist today that they won't be for another five years. (Author unknown)
The refusal to rest content, the willingness to risk excess on behalf of one's obsessions, is what distinguishes artists from entertainers, and what makes some artists adventurers on behalf of us all. (John Updike)
I paint with the stubbornness I need for living, and I've found that all painters who love their art do the same. (Suzanne Valadon)
Part of my role as artist is to make the viewer look, and think; question, and be moved; and part of my role is to bear witness. (Frances Vettergreen)
Artists buy their fruits and vegetables in the Still Life section at the market. (Stella Violano)
I write about art out of gratitude to painters for the joy and spiritual uplift they have given me. Painters interpret for us the visual glories of God and, in this way, bring us closer to Him. (Susan Vreeland)
Artists are like lit candles; some burn out fast, some are put out promptly, and the rest smolder. (Milos Vujasinovic)
Do not call yourself an artist until your peers tell you that you are! (Robert Wade)
Ya wanna be an artist? Make art! (Kay WalkingStick)
As no man is born an artist, so no man is born an angler. (Izaac Walton)
Artists are blessed when they have a clear line of communication with their inner creative intelligence, the inner eye or voice which silently moves the brush in accordance with an unspoken and never fully comprehended vision. (Marney Ward)
All the arts enrich us and each art form we embrace helps to make us whole. (Marney Ward)
Artists are more able than most to perceive the world in all its wonder and glory, and more willing than most to give themselves over to the experience. (Marney Ward)
An artist is someone who produces things that people don't need to have but that he – for some reason – thinks it would be a good idea to give them. (Andy Warhol)
Why do people think artists are special? It's just another job. (Andy Warhol)
It never seems to be linear for an artist. It is SO circular as we move in on a targeted thought, expression, piece of work. The end usually feels like a vortex - everything coming together in quite a mysterious, often very exciting, way. (Carolyn H. WarmSun)
I like writing all different kinds of songs. I've wanted to run the gamut of artists. (Diane Warren)
Art comes to us as simply as a common bird perches on a window sill or a tree branch or any other place, then flies away. (Jeffrey J. Watkins)
Being an artist is about being at the right place at the right time and having the visual creativity to know so - to notice what other people overlook. (Ben Watson III)
If an artist is someone that samples media, such as paint, to create structurally complete and emotionally expressive compositions, then a DJ, who samples sounds and other media to create structurally complete and emotionally expressive compositions, is an artist. (Rob Wegner)
A good artist should be isolated. If he isn't isolated, something is wrong. (Orson Welles)
I had rather be called a journalist than an artist. (H. G. Wells)
True creative breakthrough comes out of an inevitable moment where the artist knows he/she will have to risk it all in order to win the favor of the muse. If he/she is lucky enough to win her over and receives the gift of inspiration, the creation will be an outrageous, defining act of power and it will reflect something universal. Creations of this nature express the spirit of the time for all of us. (Jerry Wennstrom)
The great scientist dares to differ from accepted 'facts' - think irrationally - let the artist do likewise. (Edward Weston)
My major concern is to get my work before common, ordinary people; for me to be accepted as a spokesman for my people; for my work to portray them better, and to be rich and meaningful to them. A work of art was meant to belong to people, not to be a single person's private possession. Art should take its place as one of the necessities of life, like food, clothing and shelter. (Charles White)
You will face boredom and frustration your entire career as artists. You will be very frustrated seeking a voice/style that collectors can connect with. Once you accomplish that voice/style people are clamoring for, you will become bored doing it. (Jack White)
Being an artist is a lifestyle. (Wayne White)
If, when facing the paper, you say to yourself, 'I'm an artist,' you haven't a clue as to what to do! If, however, you say, 'I am an entertainer, a shapemaker and an expressive symbol collector,' you know the task ahead and how to proceed. (Edgar A. Whitney)
The artist sees objects as smudges of warm and cool colours of different shapes and values and having only a suggestion of detail. He sees the edges of objects fuse in places to form broader and simpler masses of light and shadow. (Richard Whitney)
The artist should never try to be popular. Rather the public should be more artistic. (Oscar Wilde)
Bad artists always admire each others' work. (Oscar Wilde)
The only artists I have ever known who are personally delightful are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. (Oscar Wilde)
Artists are those people who sit at the intersection between the known and unknown, the rational and irrational, coming to terms with some of the confusing histories we, as artists, deal with. (Kehinde Wiley)
A group of artists is like a flock of shepherds. (Hollis Williford)
Women, poets, and especially artists, like cats; delicate natures only can realize their sensitive nervous systems. (Helen M. Winslow)
Artists are the people among us who realize creation didn't stop on the sixth day. (Joel Peter Witkin)
Everyone is here on earth as an artist; to tell his particular story or sing her irreplaceable song; to leave a unique creative signature. (Leonard Wolf)
This is the artist, then, life's hungry man, the glutton of eternity, beauty's miser, glory's slave. (Tom Wolfe)
I didn't discover I was an artist until I was 17... It was very hard to be an artist and a child... it was like having sand up your butt when you go to the beach. (Alfre Woodard)
The mind of an artist, in order to achieve the prodigious effort of freeing whole and entire the work that is in him, must be incandescent... there must be no obstacle in it, no foreign matter unconsumed. (Virginia Woolf)
Artists today think of everything they do as a work of art. It is important to forget about what you are doing – then a work of art may happen. (Andrew Wyeth)
So every artist and would-be artist makes this same phrase: 'I knew, I never got it said.' (Philip Wylie)
We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us that they may see, it may be, their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet. (William Butler Yeats)
We always get the shit end of the stick, so I figure, why not paint the shit end of the stick? (Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun)
-from Bordercrossings interview 2001...
I was probably one of the first artists to pry the anthropologists from my leg, where they were hanging like little puppies. (Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun)
Selfless action somehow connects the artist to a larger order. Making beauty is like practicing Zen. (Rob Zeer)
Just let the artist sign an empty canvas or a frame, with the inscription, 'I had such and such a concept in mind' for this work. The artist then need not bother with producing the work, and therefore need not be worried about being dis-satisfied. All he or she needs to do is to sell it to a collector. The collector will have the guarantee that the artist thought about the work, even if momentarily, and therefore be satisfied. (Semir Zeki)
If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, will answer you: I am here to live out loud. (Emile Zola)
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