Artist Quotes

Behind every work of art lies the enormous pretension of exhibiting one's vision of the world. If such obvious arrogance is not counterbalanced by the tribulations of doubt, all that remains is a monster who is to art what a fanatic is to faith.

I had considered myself some kind of genius and had considerably underestimated the toils and difficulties encountered along the path to an art.

One step, two steps, three steps; like winds of time experience joy of centuries, when movements become revelations of the dance of destinies.

The scary part of being an artist is knowing that what makes you a better artist can also kill you.

I mean, reality sucks. The world is a cancer, and shits so bad it’s scary. Everything’s filthy. But you know what? One day, it’s not going to be here. So be glad you know what life is. You’re alive. Live.

Arrogance kills Creativity, Curiosity and Passion. Stop it and you'll learn more.

I believed that I wanted to be a poet, but deep down I just wanted to be a poem.

It’s an artist’s right to rebel against the world’s stupidity.

In my experience, what every true artist wants, really wants, is to be paid.

Magic is always there. Sometimes it just takes an artist to find it and show the rest of us where to look.

Art has no other object than to set aside the symbols of practical utility the generalities that are conventionally and socially accepted everything in fact which masks reality from us in order to set us face to face with reality itself.

The art does not always mimic the artist. You never know the real person until you slide beneath their surface

An artistic person taps into the destructive emotional energy of guilt and shame and the longing to love and be loveable and transforms these powerful emotions into a creative force.

People listening to songs are like people reading novels: for a few minutes, for a few hours, someone else gets to come in and hijack that part of your brain that's always thinking. A good book or song kidnaps your interior voice and does all the driving. With the artist in charge you're free for a little while to leave your body and be someone else.

I think there is no work of art which represents the spirit of a nation more surely than "Die Meister Singer" of Richard Wagner. Here is no plaything with local colour but the raising to its highest power all that is best in the national consciousness of his country.

[Who are the artists you admire, Surrealist or otherwise?]Remedios Varo, Max Ernst, Charlotte Salomon, Goya, Aubrey Beardsley. Beardsley is not so much about the impossible as he is about freaks and deformities, but those are interesting to me too.

Her life is lived through the masterpiece of art, that she cannot draw.

You know that I immerse myself in music, so to speak— that I think about it all day long— that I like experimenting— studying— reflecting.

In every motions to put colors on my canvas, I feel like I am screaming, "I AM HERE"... To whom?.. To where?... Where am I going to...?

The glory that is given to God by the works of his creation is what we call an “external glory.” It is something outside of God. It doesn’t actually add anything to God. It is very much like an artist who has a great talent for painting and a mind full of beautiful images. If the artist puts some of those images on canvas for people to look at and admire, it still hasn’t added anything to the artist himself. It hasn’t made him any better or more wonderful than he was before (p. 5).

Opposites though they are, both solitude and solidarity are essential if the artist is to produce works that are not only significant to his or her age, but that will also speak to future generations.

This was not the perfect work that had existed in her mind. It was only the imperfect rendering that was the best her skill could manage. Yet Giulia was not dismayed. For she knew that she would try again – and again, and again, for as long as it took to gain the experience, the judgment, the understanding to get it right. And perhaps she never would get it right. Perhaps she would never attain that flawless blue, never create that perfect image, never find the ultimate point of balance between what she could accomplish an what she could dream. Yet wasn’t that the point? To be drawn onward, ever onward, in pursuit of your deepest passion? To look back at the end fo the race and knew that you had never done less than the most you could do?

You might say “no, you will never do that, that’s not you, not who I know, not who I thought you were”, and I will say "watch me".

It will not always be easy, but it will always be beautiful.

Watch movies. Read screenplays. Let them be your guide. […] Yes, McKee has been able to break down how the popular screenplay has worked. He has identified key qualities that many commercially successful screenplays share, he has codified a language that has been adopted by creative executives in both film and television. So there might be something of tangible value to be gained by interacting with his material, either in book form or at one of the seminars.But for someone who wants to be an artist, a creator, an architect of an original vision, the best book to read on screenwriting is no book on screenwriting. The best seminar is no seminar at all.To me, the writer wants to get as many outside voices OUT of his/her head as possible. Experts win by getting us to be dependent on their view of the world. They win when they get to frame the discussion, when they get to tell you there’s a right way and a wrong way to think about the game, whatever the game is. Because that makes you dependent on them. If they have the secret rules, then you need them if you want toget ahead.The truth is, you do

I write because the security of your love allows me to develop my craft without concerning myself with trivialities — as if your love could be any more complete. But I write, in the first place,because of you, my muse. I write for your green eyes to glance at my humble words and for the pleasure of hearing you utter them.

Be an artist, in whatever little faculty possible.For the Earth, without ‘Art’ is just ‘Eh

It's not what you see that is art art is the gap.

Funny how we do not realize the true value and legacy of a living icon until they suddenly pass away. Truth is, there are many living legends among us, we just do not stop and take time to notice their worth until it's too late.

You sought to preserve your creative instincts and what would nourish them. But neurosis itself does not nourish the artist, you know; he creates in spite of it, out of anything, any material given to him. The torments and hells of [crazy men], are not for you.

He drinks his coffee tentatively, glancing at me every few seconds, watching me. Every time he glances in my direction, I quickly turn away though he obviously knows I'm watching him. I know he's wondering why I'm staring at him, but he doesn't ask.I finally take a sip of coffee, set the mug back on the table, and voice what's on my mind, "I want to draw you.

What if pretending is interfering with the person you’re meant to be?” he said.

Without an element of vulgarity, no man can be a work of art...I have to try and think what an artist is, apart from a hooligan who cannot live within his income of praise.

Take on the challenge and find inspiration in the process.

Artistic temperament is a disease that afflicts amateurs.

A work of art is a corner of creation seen through a temperament.

In his creative work the artist is dependent on sources and resources deriving from the spiritual unconscious.

The purpose of art is to create heavens to balance the world because there are so many hells in the world, there are wars, tortures and oppressions, there is unhappiness etc.

Divinity is accident of nature, magic is the work of an art.

I came to pen another poem for you, but even every unwritten poem is you.

I have never found a painter more beautiful than his paintings nor a writer who was more expressive than his works. While one got his hands dirty, other made the paper dirty to create masterpieces!

An artist will betray himself by some sort of sincerity.

There is something deeply satisfying in shaping something with your hands. Proper artificing is like a song made solid. It is an act of creation.

‎"But when I fell in love with black, it contained all color. It wasn’t a negation of color. It was an acceptance. Because black encompasses all colors. Black is the most aristocratic color of all.... You can be quiet and it contains the whole thing." Happy birthday to Louise Nevelson (1899-1988)!

I have Social Disease. I have to go out every night. If I stay home one night I start spreading rumours to my dogs.

The photographer does the world a great disservice when she leaves her camera at home.

Life is a collection of memories and feelings. Mawkish sentimentally urges us to engage in artistic overtures, we yearn to share with other people a melody of rudimentary experiences and respond to a stabilizing tune strung together with a shared ethos. We walk in parallel strides with our brethren seeking out equivalent affirmations of our being. We long to shout out to the world that we once walked this earth; we seek to leave in our wake traces of our pithy habitation. Our unfilled longing propels us into committing senseless acts of self-sabotage and then we desperately seek redemption from our slippery selves by building monuments to the human spirit. We employ a bewildering blend of conscious and unconscious materials to construct synoptic testaments to our temporal existence. We labor on the canvas of our choosing to scrawl our inimitable mark, fanatically toiling to escape a sentence of total obliteration along with our impending mortality.

The object of the artist is the creation of the beautiful. What the beautiful is is another question.

An artist must have imagination. An artist who does not use his imagination is a mechanic.

Advancing towards a person’s dreams with confidence enables a person to move beyond restrictive boundaries and meet with uncommon success. Liberated from personal insecurities and eliminating useless second guessing enables a person to live an imagined life.

It's always been most important for me to figure out "my space" rather than trying to check out what everyone else is up to, minute by minute. Technology is making it easier to connect to other people, but maybe harder to keep connected to yourself-- and that's essential for any artist, I think.

Look at this one.” I picked up a small painting of a man with dark hair and a short, dark beard. He wore a loose shirt, cobalt blue, unbuttoned at the top, showing a prominent, knobby collarbone. He looked…complicated and hungry. She’d captured him focused intensely on a book, his face pressed against a wall like he was resting. Or waiting.

Be an artist in everything you do.

At the dressing table, every woman has a chance to be an artist, and art, as Aristotle said, "completes what nature left unfinished.

I guess pencil crayons are like life; we hope to gain wisdom through our experiences, and sadly many of us learn important lessons later in life - however all that colour we scratched and pressed into our canvases create stories for our children, and grandchildren - things to laugh at as we look back, and hopefully things others can use as examples of lessons of caution, and tales of overcoming negative situations despite the overwhelming odds stacked up against us. Tales of past likes and loves, lessons learned, and the stories about how you met the right person and how you ended up with them - often a winding tale until there's an 'AH-HA' moment of enlightenment, lol. Tales of raw adversity...because rawness is beautiful, and learned wisdom which proves showing weakness is actual bravery. That not everyone you lose is a loss, and that in life, a situation will keep repeating itself until one learns their lesson. As sad as it is to see these pencils being shortened, and the way one tries to preserve what's left as they get shorter and shorter... the new box of crayons which will eventually be bought will continue the storytelling of the old, and add new stories until they themselves expire.

Just about the worst thing an artist can do is to try and be a nice person.

You might as well ask an artist to explain his art, or ask a poet to explain his poem. It defeats the purpose. The meaning is only clear thorough the search.

A work of art cannot be satisfied with being a representation it should be a presentation.

Arts without a spiritual relative is like frying buns with water.

Dance is the timeless interpretation of life.