Artist Quotes

Fine art is the discipline of breaking rules.

~ M.b. Dallocchio

Art is a journey of excellence not a goal of perfection.

~ Jacqueline Patricks

I notice I may have somehow mixed up two events, my visit with Rita to Briceland on our way to Cantrip, and our passing through Briceland again on our way back to New York, but such suffusions of swimming colors are not to be disdained by the artist in recollection.

~ Vladimir Nabokov

Being an artist isn’t a genetic disposition or a specific talent. It’s an attitude we can all adopt. It’s a hunger to seize new ground, make connections, and work without a map. If you do those things, you’re an artist.

~ Seth Godin

She had picked the spot the day before and carried out a stool low enough to sit on and still have her paintbox and her water cup within reach. Anna didn't use an easel. Easels seemed to her an altogether too assertive aid, too obvious. She liked to work as unobtrusively as possible, the paper spread on a board in her lap, close to her hand.

~ Tove Jansson

In many times, after creating a piece of work I want to stand up and applaud.

~ Shawn Lukas

I had spent many years living with a plain piece of canvas just right on my face as a headboard for my bed. As the years passed by, I watched it slowly transforming into a work of art which still lives above my head. And that my friend, is truly living art.

~ Shawn Lukas

To speak of these things and to try to understand their nature and, having understood it, to try slowly and humbly and constantly to express, to press out again, from the gross earth or what it brings forth, from sound and shape and colour which are the prison gates of our soul, an image of the beauty we have come to understand—that is art.

~ James Joyce

Every piece of art is a mirror and serves the function of reflectivity to expose to you and reveal to you more of who you are.

~ Darryl Anka

A work of art is the trace of a magnificent struggle.

~ Robert Henri

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.

~ Patrick Rothfuss

My hands are flowing like sunlight. The shapes and colors are astounding. I don't understand these images that are empowering me. My brush touches the canvas like photons to the earth, and a new world develops, free from my control, yet intrinsically dependent upon me. I am sweating with elation. I have no idea what I am doing, or what it is my hands are trying to see. There is so much strength in this clarity I am overpowered by the independence of it.

~ Daniel J. Rice

True artists unburden their envies and work toward encouraging amateurs.

~ Aniruddha Sastikar

To fornicate is to aspire to enter into another, the artist never emerges from himself.

~ Charles Baudelaire

I say that the true artist-seer, the heavenly fool who can and does produce beauty, is mainly dazzled to death by his own scruples, the blinding shapes and colors of his own sacred human consciousness.

~ J.d. Salinger

How did Adam do it? He seemed to be able to look past Miles's weirdness and insecurities and awkwardness to see Miles, himself, what he was-whatever he was-inside.

~ Rowan Speedwell

Kids are real artists. They’d rather paint the outside of the box than being stuck inside.

~ Shawn Lukas

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.

~ Amélie Nothomb

As a kid I never knew what I wanted to be when I grow up, but the only thing I knew was that I wanted to create things. And then I wanted to be an astronaut. I would paint stars and the atmosphere and then frame and hang the universe up on my bedroom wall. A few years down the line while I was still stargazing, I came to realize that I’m halfway around the world chasing something and the whole time it’s in my backyard. From the very beginning I was who I always wanted to be.

~ Shawn Lukas

A paint brush is the only tool I use extensively in my works, to push paint on canvas and conduct melodies. And that's exactly what Garden Avenue is, and all of my projects after that.

~ Shawn Lukas

Every world needed an artist.

~ Stephen Baxter

For me, a paint brush is the only tool I use extensively in my works, to push paint on canvas and conduct melodies. And that's exactly what Garden Avenue is, and all of my projects after that.

~ Shawn Lukas

Now relax, think positively and begin --- the smile of success awaits you.

~ Claudia Nice

Protect the ears of your heart, rather than being drawn in each day like the fading tides that dance daily with the moon.

~ Eric Samuel Timm

Artist is not human, but humanity.

~ Raheel Farooq

Every artist needs canvass, mine just happens to be Microsoft Word and a Thesaurus.

~ Lori Lesko

Artists are never poor, they just don't get enough time to make money !

~ Brahmananda Patra

Clearly the hardest thing for the working artist is to create his own conception and follow it, unafraid of the strictures it imposes, however rigid these may be... I see it as the clearest evidence of genius when an artist follows his conception, his idea, his principle, so unswervingly that he has this truth of his constantly in his control, never letting go of it even for the sake of his own enjoyment of his work.

~ Andrei Tarkovsky

Wasn't the whole point of being an artist, or at least part of it, that you didn't have to wear a tie?

~ Meg Wolitzer

Artist paint images unseen, musicians create sounds that emerge from silence, and authors write from a synthetic point of view about a world that can never exist.

~ Carl Henegan

Her body is one big refrigerator, where Art is well stored.

~ Elfriede Jelinek

To get from the tangible to the intangible (which mature artists in any medium claim as part of their task) a paradox of some kind has frequently been helpful. For the photographer to free himself of the tyranny of the visual facts upon which he is utterly dependent, a paradox is the only possible tool. And the talisman paradox for unique photography is to work the mirror with a memory as if it were a mirage, and the camera is a metamorphosing machine, and the photograph as if it were a metaphor…. Once freed of the tyranny of surfaces and textures, substance and form [the photographer] can use the same to pursue poetic truth (Minor White, Newhall, 281).

~ Minor White

Every criminal would be an artist if he had the talent, and every artist would become a criminal if he had the guts.

~ Adam Langer

I turn to Willa Cather’s quote: Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness. The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.

~ Cameron Conaway

Edwin Land of Polaroid talked about the intersection of the humanities and science. I like that intersection. There's something magical about that place. There are a lot of people innovating, and that's not the main distinction of my career. The reason Apple resonates with people is that there's a deep current of humanity in our innovation. I think great artists and great engineers are similar in that they both have a desire to express themselves. In fact some of the best people working on the original Mac were poets and musicians on the side. In the seventies computers became a way for people to express their creativity. Great artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo were also great art science. Michelangelo knew a lot about how to quarry stone, not just how to be a sculptor.

~ Walter Isaacson

The mob not only grabs hold of art without being entitled to do so, but it also enters the artist. It takes up residence inside the artist and smashes a few holes in the wall, windows to the outer world: The mob wants to be seen.

~ Elfriede Jelinek

An artist is nothing without his or her obsessions, and I have mine.

~ Andres Serrano

Damien Hirst is acceptable because he's a brand. It's like buying a Porche. Hardline conservatives will never accept it, others think it's a massive waste of money but most will just shrug and move on

~ Qatar Cultural Official

I would like to paint the way a bird sings.

~ Claude Monet

The fact that for a long time Cubism has not been understood and that even today there are people who cannot see anything in it means nothing. I do not read English, an English book is a blank book to me. This does not mean that the English language does not exist. Why should I blame anyone but myself if I cannot understand what I know nothing about? -Pablo Picasso.

~ Pablo Picasso