Artists Quotes - Page 3

Making art requires a degree of intentionality. All works of art require a contemplative individual drawing from their bank of knowledge and immersion into the realms of memory and imagination in order to make an outward, communicative expression. Only human beings can draw upon the dialectical tension between memory and imagination to create artistic renderings.

That kind of pursuit is not beneficial to mankind: art for self aggrandizement at the cost of love.

This guy! I plead the fifth. This guy is nuts.”- Eminem“Dope questions, man. Very insightful, very thoughtful.”- Guru (Gang Starr)“You like a Psychiatrist or some shit? This shit is just coming out but go ahead.”- Mary J. Blige“Definitely a real interview! Digging deep up in there, man. Not afraid to ask questions!”- K-Ci Hailey (Jodeci)“The Wizard asked me for a copy of your magazine.”- Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo (Daft Punk)“You didn’t wear your glasses and you haven’t carried your hearing aid. What else is wrong with you?”- Bushwick Bill“Peace and blessing, Brother Harris. Thank you for inspiring my words. Keep ‘yo balance.”- Erykah Badu“Can I see that pen?”- Bobby Brown“What else do you want to know? Talk to me.”- Aaliyah

Pregnancy had seemed a reasonable excuse for letting her metal-smithing tools languish, but that accounted for only eighteen months of the last twenty-six years. Motherhood wasn't the real problem, though it took him a long time to figure out what was. She needed resistance, the very quality that metal most demonstrably offered up. Suddenly Glynis had no difficulty to overcome, no hard artisan's life with galleries filching half the too-small price of a mokume brooch that had taken three weeks to forge. No, her husband made a good living, and if she slept late and dawdled the afternoon away reading Lustre, American Craft Magazine and Lapidary Journal, the phone bill would still get paid. For that matter, she needed need itself. She could overcome her anguish about embarking on an object that, once completed, might not meet her exacting standards only if she had no choice. In this sense, his helping had hurt her. By providing the financial cushion that should have facilitated making all the metal whathaveyou she liked, he had ruined her life. Wrapped in a slackening bow, ease was a poisonous present.

Who but the artist has the power to open man up, to set free the imagination? The others - priest, teacher, saint, statesman, warrior - hold us to the path of history. They keep us chained to the rock, that the vultures may eat out our hearts. It is the artist who has the courage to go against the crowd; he is the unrecognized "hero of our time" - and of all time.

Time and death: It's the ultimate vision of an artist at the end of everything. It's just what's there. It was not something I planned to do.

In this image (watching sensual murder through a peephole) Lorrain embodies the criminal delight of decadent art. The watcher who records the crimes (both the artist and consumer of art) is constructed as marginal, powerless to act, and so exculpated from action, passive subject of a complex pleasure, condemning and yet enjoying suffering imposed on others, and condemning himself for his own enjoyment. In this masochistic celebration of disempowerment, the sharpest pleasure recorded is that of the death of some important part of humanity. The dignity of human life is the ultimate victim of Lorrain's art, thrown away on a welter of delighted self-disgust.

On the great canvas of timeWe all create our own masterpiece.Choreographing our steps across minutes and hoursDancing over the daysPainting pictures over months andWriting our stories on the years.Singing our songs that echo across eons.We are all a thread in the talent tapestry.A snapshot in the cosmic, collective collage.

If I could talk about it, I would not have to do it. I make art.

The last thing we discover in composing a work is what to put down first.

The creation of a painting takes as much trickery and premeditation as the commitment of a crime.

If you haven't proclaimed it in your own life, do it now. Say, "I am an artist.

It's hard to explain your passions, but sometimes it is harder to live them.

There is no such thing as an “independent artist”. All artists are essentially co-dependent of the audience.

An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them.

Underneath an artist's preoccupations with sex, society, religion, etc. (all the staple abstractions that allow the forebrain to chatter) there is a soul tortured beyond endurance by the lack of tenderness in the world.

I think we live in a time where artists are very tidy and afraid of what others might think. They hesitate in expressing their views and opinions. So being original is rare. For me, it's about living the life you create for yourself, to create your kingdom. I think we should work on being our unique selves and becoming our greatest versions. I like to remind people to take the power to live their life the way they wish.

Spirit is a child, the tune of dancing feet its lullaby.

I've lived all these years among those who create nothing and change nothing,' I said. 'Actors and musicians-they're saints to me.

O wayfarer! Yearn finds quench, not in meadows, seashores or altitude of mountain peaks; but when being and dance are one.

We are all artists painting our desires on the canvas of life.

Good talent needs a showcase to prove its worth.There are many cases across the world across arts where good and talented artists have disappeared bcz no one saw them.

If I could remove one thing from the world and replace it with something else, I would erase politics and put art in its place. That way, art teachers would rule the world. And since art is the most supreme form of love, beautiful colors and imagery would weave bridges for peace wherever there are walls. Artists, who are naturally heart-driven, would decorate the world with their love, and in that love — poverty, hunger, lines of division, and wars would vanish from the earth forever. Children of the earth would then be free to play, imagine, create, build and grow without bloodshed, terror and fear.

All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness.

Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are.

You can survive without artistry, but you cannot live without artistry.

It is exhausting living in a population where people don't speak up if what they witness doesn't directly threaten them.

Not all are called to be artists in the specific sense of the term. Yet, as Genesis has it, all men and women are entrusted with the task of crafting their own life: in a certain sense, they are to make of it a work of art, a masterpiece.

I do believe most curators - maybe I'm only speaking for myself here - want to be artists on some level. Curators must have an innate interest in what an artist makes. And they certainly have their opinions and criticisms, and the always ask, "How would I have made this, or how would another artist make this?

You've always lived a life of pretense, not a real life-- a simulated existence, not a genuine existence. Everything about you, everything you are, has always been pretense, never genuine, never real.

Artists are agents of chaos. It is the artistsjob to encourage entropy, to promote chaos. Idols must be killed, icons crushed, beliefsshattered. It is the artists job to encourage legitimate, unadulterated, raw thought andemotion. Art that does nothing new, that simply fills an established role, is not art.It is a product. A stale, stagnant product of a disgustingly mundane process that has beendone so much it is assumed mandatory. Little different than feces. The last thing the world needs is to get shittier.

Any person whom seeks to live a historical existence must devote their efforts to learning about the world, care about people and nature, and seek to express their thoughts in the artistic methodology most appropriate to their particular talent. A person cannot fake self-awareness or imitate an artistic nature. A person must honestly earn a heightened level of conscious awareness.

Art is the reflection of pure emotion and mind, the nature of sensation. An artist illustrates that.

You are on my side," she says."What side is that?" I ask."The winning side," she says, and smiles. "The team of the artists.""Who are we playing?""The barbarians," she says. "We are always playing them.

The first among mankind will always be those who make something imperishable out of a sheet of paper, a canvas, a piece of marble, or a few sounds

Picasso had a saying - 'good artists copy, great artists steal' - and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.

more to be a human being with

But if modesty is interpreted not as diffidence or self-effacingness, but as non-overweening, a realistic assessment of the job to be done and one's ability to do it, then you might say the chief virtue of excellent artists is their modesty...But knowing your limits and going to them isn't arrogance. It's greatness of spirit.

There are Tantrics who deliberately break taboos and social norms and then there are other Tantrics who, by means of their practices and the way that they practice, that to society in general, it may have the appearance of breaking social norms but in fact that is just the manifestation of the progress of their practice.

Magic is logic.

Zeena Schreck is a Berlin-based interdisciplinary artist, author, musician/composer, tantric teacher, mystic, animal rights activist, and counter-culture icon known by her mononymous artist name, ZEENA. Her work stems from her experience within the esoteric, shamanistic and magical traditions of which she's practiced, taught and been initiated. She is a practicing Tibetan Buddhist yogini, teaches at the Buddhistische Gesellschaft Berlin and is the spiritual leader of the Sethian Liberation Movement (SLM).

... consider the meaning of these images. Every time you're working with them, ask yourself: what do they mean? And, even more important, what do they mean to me? The more specific and personal something is, the more its universality emerges.

Burdened no more is soul for whom life flows through dance like breath.

Dance to inspire, dance to freedom, life is about experiences so dance and let yourself become free.

Now, as I understand it, the bards were feared. They were respected, but more than that they were feared. If you were just some magician, if you'd pissed off some witch, then what's she gonna do, she's gonna put a curse on you, and what's gonna happen? Your hens are gonna lay funny, your milk's gonna go sour, maybe one of your kids is gonna get a hare-lip or something like that — no big deal. You piss off a bard, and forget about putting a curse on you, he might put a satire on you. And if he was a skilful bard, he puts a satire on you, it destroys you in the eyes of your community, it shows you up as ridiculous, lame, pathetic, worthless, in the eyes of your community, in the eyes of your family, in the eyes of your children, in the eyes of yourself, and if it's a particularly good bard, and he's written a particularly good satire, then three hundred years after you're dead, people are still gonna be laughing, at what a twat you were.

As an artist I have always tried to be faithful to my vision of life, and I have frequently been in conflict with those who wanted me to paint not what I saw but what they wished me to see.

General belief is “There is no real magic, only tricks” but a great magician compel people not to trust that belief and make them believe, after all "There does exist a real magic".

The job is what you do when you are told what to do. The job is showing up at the factory, following instructions, meeting spec, and being managed.Someone can always do your job a little better or faster or cheaper than you can.The job might be difficult, it might require skill, but it's a job.Your art is what you do when no one can tell you exactly how to do it. Your art is the act of taking personal responsibility, challenging the status quo, and changing people.I call the process of doing your art 'the work.' It's possible to have a job and do the work, too. In fact, that's how you become a linchpin.The job is not the work.

Weirdism is definitely the cornerstone of many an artist's career.

True artists unburden their envies and work toward encouraging amateurs.

Make dance the mission every moment seeks to accomplish.

We are the next us.

I must not undervalue my work simply because I enjoy it. A working artist understands his worth and lives by it.

Catching creativity is like catching butterflies – fast-flying, bright-colored sparks darting here and there, it requires quick wits, good eyes and desire to net them. And once you have them, you need to act fast. An idea, like a butterfly doesn’t last long: it is ephemeral. It is here, and now it is gone – so quick, grab your laptop, your pen and paper, your Dictaphone, your sketch pad, whatever your mode of expression or recording, swoop and catch.

With cold eyes and indifferent mind the spectators regard the work. Connoissers admire the "skill" (as one admires a tightrope walker), enjoy the "quality of painting" (as one enjoys a pasty). But hungry souls go hungry away. The vulgar herd stroll through the rooms and pronounce the pictures "nice" or "splendid." Those who could speak have said nothing, those who could hear have heard nothing.

I came there again another time. And I looked many times again. I was filled with consolation, with my consolation.The thirty-three abominations were truthful. They were the truth. They were life. The sharp fragments of life, sharp, complete moments. Such are women. They have lovers.Each of these thirty-three (or how many of them were there?) had painted his mistress. Excellent! I grew used to myself being in their presence.Thirty-three mistresses! Thirty-three mistresses!And I was all of them and yet all were not me.I studied the abomination for a long while: before I modeled for them, as well as afterwards.I modelled in order to study. This I felt so keenly. It seemed to me that I was learning about life by pieces, by separate pieces, fragments, but every fragment possessed all its own complexity and power.The abominations began to divide in half. With every day this became clearer. One half became mistresses and the other half queens.Each of the thirty-three created his mistress or his queen.("Thirty Three Abominations")

Yes, but the artist?" said Nigel almost fiercely. "He's different, you know he is. He's driven by some compulsion: if he can't do what he knows he has to do with his life he might as well be dead. He's got to break through the world's indifference, or else break himself against it. He can't help it.

Before, I could only guess of who I was. Now, thanks to my art, I know who I am

I had artistic classical training, and when you learn the classics for so many years, you might gain audacity, power and confidence to subvert everything. I am like the originals buffoons. I love the rules because I can break them.

Artists are strange people. They make the world a beautiful place, and make others feel good, but they are a bunch of lonely people. Artists are people with unfulfilled, unrealistic dreams, lonely, and always searching for perfection.