Art Quotes

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

My inspiration is art… because without art, we would just be stuck with reality.

I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way — things I had no words for.

Art disturbs, science reassures.

Art is man’s challenge to time, his rebuke to chaos; the protest will survive neither the triumph of fire, nor the finality of ice — but it is better than the silence of consent.

Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.

Pictures must not be too picturesque.

Behind unfinished art cries an unfinished artist.

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.

Art is like a border of flowers along the course of civilization.

Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.

Sometimes for an artist the only difference between insanity and genius is success.

A great artist is always before his time or behind it.

If one looks closely enough, one can see angels in every piece of art.

As the sun colors flowers, so does art color life.

Art doesn’t have to matter to a lot of people to matter a lot.

The world today doesn’t make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do?

Artistry is an innate distrust of the theory of reality concocted by the five senses.

Art is an adventure that never seems to end.

Painting is silent poetry.

Art is the colors and textures of your imagination.

The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.

What you often see in a lesser work of art is a subject captured perfectly and never set free.

Art, as far as it is able, follows nature, as a pupil imitates his master; thus your art must be, as it were, God’s grandchild.

Art is the only way to run away without leaving home.

The artist’s talent sits uneasy as an object of public acclaim, having been so long an object of private despair.

Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling.

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.

Art… does not take kindly to facts, is helpless to grapple with theories, and is killed outright by a sermon.

Art is spirituality in drag.

I felt that these pictures had something to say to me that was very important for me to know, but I could not tell what it was…. They gave me an emotion that I could not analyse. They said something that words were powerless to utter. I fancy that Strickland saw vaguely some spiritual meaning in material things that was so strange that he could only suggest it with halting symbols. It was as though he found in the chaos of the universe a new pattern, and were attempting clumsily, with anguish of soul, to set it down. I saw a tormented spirit striving for the release of expression.

God and other artists are always a little obscure.

Doing art… anything creative, is just a spiritual thing to do. I almost feel like every comic strip I do is sort of a little prayer. And I really feel like the only thing real is love.

Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one.

It has been said that art is a tryst, for in the joy of it maker and beholder meet.

Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.

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

Art is pictures straight from the heart.

Every child is an artist, with imagination and the artistic instinct. Life stamps these out…

But that’s what being an artist is — feeling crummy before everyone else feels crummy.

We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.

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

The artist is a receptacle for the 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.

Let me ask you something, what is not art?

I don’t paint things. I only paint the difference between things.

Pretty much everything inspires me, and it doesn’t have to be art specifically, it can just be life — it can just be an experience you have walking down the street, and seeing an old man cross the street and how it makes you feel emotionally. Art is just very emotionally driven for me. I like any art that has soul.

Artists can color the sky red because they know it’s blue. Those of us who aren’t artists must color things the way they really are or people might think we’re stupid.

Art is a shadow of what a person is thinking… a small glimpse of what they hold inside. Little secrets, regrets, joys… every line has its own meaning.

Art is art, even when unsuccessful.

Science is out of the reach of morals, for her eyes are fixed upon eternal truths. Art is out of the reach of morals, for her eyes are fixed upon things beautiful and immortal and ever-changing. To morals belong the lower and less intellectual spheres.

For me, painting is a way to forget life. It is a cry in the night, a strangled laugh.

Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.

It is a mistake for a sculptor or a painter to speak or write very often about his job. It releases tension needed for his work.

Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.

To send light into the darkness of men’s hearts — such is the duty of the artist.

Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together.

Only an artist with a part of God in him can see beauty in the commonplaces of life. The rest merely mark time until they die.

O, how much simpler things would be if eyes could paint or brush could see.

Art hath an enemy called ignorance.

Art is the struggle to understand.

Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea.

Art is when you hear a knocking from your soul — and you answer.

Listen carefully to first criticisms made of your work. Note just what it is about your work that critics don’t like — then cultivate it. That’s the only part of your work that’s individual and worth keeping.

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.

A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.

I want to reach that condensation of sensations that constitutes a picture.

What garlic is to salad, insanity is to art.

There is something ghostly in all great art.

If Michelangelo had been straight, the Sistine Chapel would have been wallpapered.

When painting, an artist must take care not to trap his soul in the canvas.

The artist does not see things as they are, but as he is.

Art holds fast when all else is lost.

We perceive, in fact, that the only matter upon which any worker, other than the artist, can congratulate himself, whether he be manual-worker, brain-worker, surgeon, judge, or politician, is that he is helping to make the world tolerable for the artist. It is only the artist who will leave anything behind him. He is the fighting-man, the man who counts; the others are merely the Army Service Corps of civilization.

Art is Man’s nature. Nature is god’s art.

Art is the triumph over chaos.

While I recognize the necessity for a basis of observed reality… true art lies in a reality that is felt.

Art is your emotions flowing in a river of imagination.

Colors are the deeds and sufferings of light.

Perfection in art, as often in life, is better captured by eraser than pencil.

Great art is as irrational as great music. It is mad with its own loveliness.

Art is not a thing; it is a way.

God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant and the cat. He has no real style. He just goes on trying other things.

There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.

Great art picks up where nature ends.

The true painter strives to paint what can only be seen through his world.

Man will begin to recover the moment he takes art as seriously as physics, chemistry or money.

I am for an art that is political-erotical-mystical, that does something other than sit on its ass in a museum.

Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom.

Photography is an immediate reaction, drawing is a meditation.

The artist gazes upon a reality and creates his own impression. The viewer gazes upon the impression and creates his own reality.

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.

An artist’s instinct is more refined than the typical mortal’s.

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.

Art is… a question mark in the minds of those who want to know what’s happening.

Picasso would give up cubism just to capture your curves.

To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art; men can only make us feel small in the wrong way.

Art is indeed not the bread but the wine of life.

Why should I paint dead fish, onions and beer glasses? Girls are so much prettier.

As far as I am concerned, a painting speaks for itself. What is the use of giving explanations, when all is said and done? A painter has only one language.

The first assumption of an art critic is that the artist meant to paint something else.

Art is a kind of illness.

Sometimes, to pursue a new idea, the artist must forfeit his deposit on an old idea.

Picasso is not our greatest painter, but he is our greatest artist. He’s the great satyr art figure. His whole life is a work of art.

Reflexes and instincts are not pretty. It is their decoration that initiates art.

What art offers is space — a certain breathing room for the spirit.

I’ll dip my brush into the sunrise, and the sunset, and the rainbow.

Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression.