Artist Quotes · Page 402

My art flatters nobody by imitation; it courts nobody by smoothness, tickles nobody by petiteness... there is no finish in nature.

— John Constable

Art is supposed to change and grow and accord with the times. It seems perfect to me that we have a period…

— Claudia Jessie

Only an idiot would open an exhibition saying, 'Look at my awesome work.'

— Cai Guo-Qiang

I think every creative impulse that a working writer, or artist of any sort has, comes out of that dark old country…

— Anne Rivers Siddons

Painting is the pattern of one's own nervous system being projected on canvas.

— Francis Bacon

Perhaps the mission of an artist is to interpret beauty to people - the beauty within themselves.

— Langston Hughes

The meaning of art in a time of suffering, a time of war, is much more intense. People are more focused.

— Haris Pasovic

There is probably nothing more sublime than discontent transmuted into a work of art, a scientific discovery, and so on.

— Eric Hoffer

. . . I have written a couple of screenplays for studios, and each time has been less gratifying than the last.…

— Craig Lucas

I would say "These Days." It was the title song to an album I put out, and it's really this song that…

— Mike Stud

I find that acrylics dry very fast - which is supposed to be its charm; however, I find that because of that…

— Boris Vallejo

Sometimes I draw with my left hand and I am pretty terrible. The drawings end up just looking like shakier/inconsistent (worse) versions…

— Jason Polan

With the Internet today, it is possible to do some mixed media things where you can write about an artist and link…

— Robert Hilburn

“When the travesties scattered throughout our modern art museums are set alongside the glories of ancient Greece, the Christian heart should swell…

— Douglas Wilson

My idea of art is, you write something that makes people feel so strongly that they get some conviction about who they…

— Mary Karr

When I was a kid, it was thought I would do something in the visual arts because I was always drawing, but…

— Michel Faber

I do Xeroxes of my past collections and then I draw over them to see where I'll go next.

— Rick Owens

Art gives us the illusion of liberation from the sordid business of being.

— Fernando Pessoa

“After all, a love of art is a fine thing for a young boy, but art is long—and life can be pretty…

— Vincent Price

“And if what they say is true--if every great painting is really a self-portrait--what, if anything, is Fabritius saying about himself?”

— Donna Tartt

I had a Vincent van Gogh, a small Provençal landscape. We sold it. If you're going to have a van Gogh it…

— Pierre Berge

“That is the bitterness of art: you see a good effect, and some nonsense about sense continually intervenes.”

— Robert Louis Stevenson

To me, the making of art and experiences around that are the biggest part to me.

— Alison Sudol

That's why I try to stay away from the big-name producers, so I can prove that it's not about the producer, it's…

— Sisqo

O great creator of being grant us one more hour to perform our art and perfect our lives.

— Jim Morrison

Be an artist at whatever you do. Even if you are a street sweeper, be the Michelangelo of street sweepers.

— Martin Luther King, Jr

The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as the sculptor works on his block of stone.

— William James

Art without emotion its like chocolate cake without sugar. It makes you gag.

— Laurie Halse Anderson

Where I come from revolution is the only creation, and the revolutionary the only artist.

— Ayi Kwei Armah

Painting is easy when you don't know how, but very difficult when you do.

— Edgar Degas

“When I was as old as these children, I could draw like Raphael, but it took me a lifetime to learn to…

— Ingo F. Walther

I’ve come to believe that, fundamentally, art matters more than politics.

— John Luther Adams

I had drawings that were the first time that mathematics was put into visual form.

— Agnes Denes

Art does not solve problems but makes us aware of their existence. It opens our eyes to see and our brain to…

— Magdalena Abakanowicz

“driven, passionate, mercurial, irascible" [the character of Michelangelo]”

— Miles J. Unger

A work of art does not answer questions, it provokes them; and its essential meaning is in the tension between the contradictory…

— Leonard Bernstein

One doesn't need to know the artist's private intentions. The work tells all.

— Susan Sontag

If a chair or a building is not functional, if it appears to be only art, it is ridiculous.

— Donald Judd

I mean, art for art's sake is ridiculous. Art is for the sake of one's needs.

— Carl Andre

I feel people are seeing me as a true artist rather than a singer, or an entertainer, or a girl who just…

— Alessia Cara