Artist Quotes · Page 281

I often painted fragments of things because it seemed to make my statement as well as or better than the whole could.

— Georgia O'Keeffe

One might as well attempt to describe the smoothness of the wind as to paint a clear picture of his complete swing.

— Grantland Rice

I used to sit and draw in the evening with a couple of crates of beer. That makes the ideas flow.

— David Linley

As an artist I'd choose the thing that's beautiful more than the one that's true.

— Laurie Anderson

I am also an artist. I have the whole world as my canvas. I paint souls...

— Meher Baba

True art can only spring from the intimate linking of the serious and the playful.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Art is the result of a creative impulse derived out of a consciousness of life.

— John French Sloan

I think it's pretentious to create art just for the sake of stroking the artists ego.

— Lou Reed

In Paris in the late '40s, I started making my first reliefs. They are separate panels. I wanted to do something coming…

— Ellsworth Kelly

“Artist paint images unseen, musicians create sounds that emerge from silence, and authors write from a synthetic point of view about a…

— Carl Henegan

“I painted the lines and colours that affected my inner eye. I painted from memory without adding anything, without the details that…

— Ulrich Bischoff

You think my paintings are calm, like windows in some cathedral? You should look again. I'm the most violent of all the…

— Mark Rothko

We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth at least the truth that…

— Pablo Picasso

Art gives life to what history killed. Art gives voice to what history denied, silenced, or persecuted. Art brings truth to the…

— Carlos Fuentes

Most of my painting is done sitting in a chair with a book. I'd say it's 80 per cent sitting and reading,…

— Susan Rothenberg

The most important thing for anyone, I think, is to be engaged, whether you're an artist or a journalist is to be…

— Billy Bragg

As artists, it's really important to take time to see what other art is happening and to know what's happening in the…

— Zoe Lister-Jones

The black artist is dangerous. Black art controls the 'Negro's' reality, negates negative influences, and creates positive images.

— Sonia Sanchez

As an artist I come to sing, but as a citizen, I will always speak for peace, and no one can silence…

— Paul Robeson

We're all trying to be artists making our own unique statements. I think the only real way to do that is through…

— Ryan Guzman

There is my love... of the young artists of my country who can carry on the dreams and ideals into the future.

— Joseph Plaskett

Goddamn it, FEELING is what I like in art, not CRAFTINESS and the hiding of feelings.

— Jack Kerouac

Nature as it is-nature with nothing selected or discarded from it-cannot become a work of art.

— Kafu Nagai

A president cannot meaningfully honor certain token artists while the people at large are so dishonored.'”

— Adrienne Rich

I wanted to become a cartoon artist, a portrait artist, and an illustrator. This was my first idea.

— Karl Lagerfeld

Animators can only draw from their own experiences of pain and shock and emotions.

— Hayao Miyazaki

This is the merit and distinction of art: to be more real than reality, to be not nature but nature's essence.

— William Ernest Henley

“It's dark times like these that present us the canvas where we paint our own greatness.”

— Richard Paul Evans

The main function of the museum has been to serve as a pedestal upon which a clique of socialites pose as patrons…

— Albert C. Barnes

Anything can be art. Art is the relations between relations, not the relations between objects.

— Joseph Kosuth

To some extent I happily don't know what I'm doing. I feel that it's an artist's responsibility to trust that.

— David Byrne

Keep your love of nature, for that is the true way to understand art more and more.

— Vincent Van Gogh

It is true that independent music is risky, but the amount of freedom of expression it provides an artist overpowers this risk.

— Ankit Tiwari

Does anyone really believe a four-year degree is what separates an ethical person from a con artist?

— Rich Paul

Variety is more than a means of avoiding boredom, since art is more than an entertainment of the senses.

— Rudolf Arnheim

Every artist obviously wants to sell a million records and do the MTV cribs thing, but I'm realistic.

— JD Era

I don't know if I'll ever get used to hearing my name being mentioned alongside all these other legendary artists that have…

— Gretchen Wilson

I take pride in the fact that I was the first Hispanic artist to really crack the English market.

— Jose Feliciano

“It's not that he doesn't smile; it's that if his smile were something you drew, you'd erase it, thinking, Wrong.”

— Elizabeth Berg

I had some money, I made the best paintings ever. I was completely reclusive, worked a lot, took a lot of drugs.…

— Jean-Michel Basquiat