Artist Quotes

This is the artist, then, life's hungry man, the glutton of eternity, beauty's miser, glory's slave.

~ Tom Wolfe

The gummy bears tattoo was my idea. It's my son's favorite candy. The sketch was my other son's idea. It's a self-portrait of himself. I just showed the artist his sketch and had him tattoo it on my forearm. It looks like a stick person with big hair. It's pretty funny.

~ Prince Fielder

The artist must bow to the monster of his own imagination.

~ Richard Wright

I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination.

~ Albert Einstein

I was always extremely creative. I was very artistic and never strong with numbers or science. I wanted to be an artist or a fashion designer. I wanted to be something that allowed for a lot of imagination.

~ Whitney Wolfe

Today the function of the artist is to bring imagination to science and science to imagination, where they meet, in the myth.

~ Cyril Connolly

What distinguishes a great artist from a weak one is first their sensibility and tenderness; second, their imagination, and third, their industry.

~ Salman Rushdie

There's a particular sensitivity required to be an artist, and a certain vulnerability, perhaps, and also, somewhere between, you're in your body a lot, too. It's much more physical than one would imagine because I think it's the body where the imagination lives somehow. I do feel the imagination isn't just in the brain up there.

~ Michael Leunig

There's no artist in this world that doesn't enjoy the dream that if they have bad reviews now, the story of Keats can redeem them, in their fantasy or imagination, in the future. I think Keats' poem 'Endymion' is a really difficult poem, and I'm not surprised that a lot of people pulled it apart in a way.

~ Jane Campion

All of the stuff I can't afford to do on a TV budget, I just put into the comic book because you're really only limited in a comic by your artist's imagination.

~ Marc Guggenheim

Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.

~ Leo Tolstoy

The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web.

~ Pablo Picasso

Every human is an artist. And this is the main art that we have: the creation of our story.

~ Don Miguel Ruiz

An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.

~ Charles Bukowski

The true artist is not proud: he unfortunately sees that art has no limits; he feels darkly how far he is from the goal, and though he may be admired by others, he is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius only appears as a distant, guiding sun.

~ Ludwig Van Beethoven

The artist vocation is to send light into the human heart.

~ George Sand

True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.

~ Albert Einstein

An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose.

~ Langston Hughes

To an engineer, good enough means perfect. With an artist, there's no such thing as perfect.

~ Alexander Calder

The artist who aims at perfection in everything achieves it in nothing.

~ Eugène Delacroix

Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience.

~ Rebecca West

The history of modern art is also the history of the progressive loss of art's audience. Art has increasingly become the concern of the artist and the bafflement of the public.

~ Paul Gauguin

To send light into the darkness of men's hearts - such is the duty of the artist.

~ Robert Schumann

There's traditionally been a large disconnection in contemporary art between the audience and the artist. Generally, audiences are looking towards what they like, and I can tell you, that's the last thing on an artist's mind.

~ James Turrell

I think it's the pain and suffering that drive you to become an artist. The art itself should be the pain, sort of exorcising every demon and making you feel like you're a person that matters.

~ Marilyn Manson

The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person.

~ Abraham Lincoln

I've been called many names like perfectionist, difficult and obsessive. I think it takes obsession, takes searching for the details for any artist to be good.

~ Barbra Streisand

An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world.

~ George Santayana

An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.

~ Jean Cocteau

The artist's world is limitless. It can be found anywhere, far from where he lives or a few feet away. It is always on his doorstep.

~ Paul Strand

The artist must create a spark before he can make a fire and before art is born, the artist must be ready to be consumed by the fire of his own creation.

~ Auguste Rodin

If a patron buys from an artist who needs money, the patron then makes himself equal to the artist; he is building art into the world; he creates.

~ Ezra Pound

What marks the artist is his power to shape the material of pain we all have.

~ Lionel Trilling

An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.

~ James Whistler

Architects, sculptors painters, we all must return to the crafts! For art is not a 'profession.' There is no essential difference between the artist and the craftsman. The artist is an exalted craftsman.

~ Walter Gropius

An artist cannot fail it is a success to be one.

~ Charles Horton Cooley

The marble not yet carved can hold the form of every thought the greatest artist has.

~ Michelangelo

I've always enjoyed feeling a connection to the avant-garde, such as Dada and surrealism and pop art. The only thing the artist can do is be honest with themselves and make the art they want to make. That's what I've always done.

~ Jeff Koons

Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.

~ André Gide

My philosophy is that I'm an artist. I perform an art not with a paint brush or a camera. I perform with bodily movement. Instead of exhibiting my art in a museum or a book or on canvas, I exhibit my art in front of the multitudes.

~ Steve Prefontaine