Quotes by Artists - Page 30

Art is not about itself but the attention we bring to it.
Marcel Duchamp
Photography is essentially an act of recognition by street photographers, not an act of invention. Photographers might respond to an old man’s face, or an Arbus freak, or the way light hits a building—and then they move on. Whereas in all the other art forms, take William Blake, everything that came to that paper never existed before. It’s the idea of alchemy, of making something from nothing.
Duane Michals
Begin by learning to draw and paint like the old masters. After that, you can do as you like; everyone will respect you.
Salvador Dalí
Grey has no agenda. . . . Grey has the ability, that no other colour has, to make the invisible visible.
Roma Tearne
A picture might be worth a thousand words but a good sentence is worth a thousand windows
Mati Klarwein
The need to be a great artist makes it hard to be an artist. The need to produce a great work of art makes it hard to produce any art at all.
Julia Cameron
I really, sincerely believe that one should trust the work, and not the author.
Peter Greenaway
Curiosity is the main energy...
Robert Rauschenberg
I try to apply colors like words that shape poems, like notes that shape music.
Joan Miró
Consider everything an experiment.
Corita Kent
Serious art is born from serious play.
Julia Cameron
The individual, man as a man, man as a brain, if you like, interests me more than what he makes, because I've noticed that most artists only repeat themselves.
Marcel Duchamp
Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.
Salvador Dalí
This grandiose tragedy that we call modern art.
Salvador Dalí
Tattooing, when understood in its entirety, must be seen as a religious act. The human being brings forth images from the center of the self and communicates them to the world. Fantasy is embodied in reality and the person is made whole.
Spider Webb
I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste.
Marcel Duchamp
Art is not about thinking something up. It is the opposite -- getting something down.
Julia Cameron
I have things in my head that are not like what anyone taught me — shapes and ideas so near to me, so natural to my way of being and thinking.
Georgia O'Keeffe
An artist is someone who produces things that people don't need to have but that he - for some reason - thinks it would be a good idea to give them.
Andy Warhol
People love mystery, and that is why they love my paintings.
Salvador Dalí
I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way... things I had no words for.
Georgia O'Keeffe
The mystery was gone but the amazement was just starting.
Andy Warhol
Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.
Andy Warhol
I just do art because I’m ugly and there’s nothing else for me to do.
Andy Warhol
I don't think it was pain that made [Vincent Van Gogh] great - I think his painting brought him whatever happiness he had.
David Lynch
I force myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste.
Marcel Duchamp
Art is what you can get away with.
Andy Warhol
Fame is not the same as success, and in our true souls we know that.
Julia Cameron
I’m not using any word,” Ronan said. The annoying thing about Ronan was always that he was angry when everyone else was calm, and calm when everyone else was angry. Because Blue was ready to bust a vein, his voice was utterly pacific. “I’m just telling you I’m not going. Maybe it’s wrong, maybe it’s not. My soul’s in enough peril as it is.
Maggie Stiefvater
Oftentimes in denying yourself pleasure you do but store the desire in the recesses of your being.Who knows but that which seems omitted today, waits for tomorrow?Even your body knows its heritage and its rightful need and will not be deceived.And your body is the harp of your soul,And it is yours to bring forth sweet music from it or confused sounds.
Kahlil Gibran
Seven times have I despised my soul: The sixth time when she despised the ugliness of a face, and knew not that it was one of her own masks.
Kahlil Gibran
Remember to delight yourself first, then others can be truly delighted."This was my mantra when I published my first book in 1990, and still holds true. When we focus on the song of our soul and heart, then others will be touched similarly. Sometimes people wonder or worry whether people will like or approve of their creative expression. It's none of your business. It's your business to stay present and focused for the work of your deepest dreams. It might look crooked or strange, or be very odd-but if it delights you, then it is yours, and will find it's way into other hearts.
S.A.R.K.
My body is precious and not separate from my soul.
S.A.R.K.
Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon your reason and your judgment wage war against your passion and your appetite.
Kahlil Gibran
Jesus went without comfort so that you might have it. He postponed joy so that you might share in it. He willingly chose isolation so that you might never be alone in your hurt and sorrow. He had no real fellowship so that fellowship might be yours, this moment. This alone is enough cause for great gratitude!
Joni Eareckson Tada
A great philosopher once said: 'We are what we Contemplate'And in these modern times when mankind is constantly confronted with images of conflict and world disasters, it seems very important to contemplate the Beautiful. It has become my personal crusade as an artist, to create images which uplift and nurture the human heart; to create that which serves as a reminder of what is Sacred and Beautiful within the drama of Life....Ever since I can remember, my innermost nature has always been to do acts of kindness and to create, from saving lost animals, to organizing charitable events; from mothering my four children to now giving birth to the 'Art of Beauty'.
Ginger Gilmour
As food nourishes the body, beauty nourishes the spirit.
Ginger Gilmour
Not much to look at, but as with all true beauty it is what's inside that counts.
Matt Sewell
Why,' I said, quite surprised by my own eloquence in inventing all this stuff, 'it happens every day. The old old story. Boys and girls fall in love, that is, they are driven mad and go blind and deaf and see each other not as human animals with comic noses and bandy legs and voices like frogs, but as angels so full of shining goodness that like hollow turnips with candles put into them, they seem miracles of beauty. And the next minute the candles shoot out sparks and burn their eyes. And they seem to each other like devils, full of spite and cruelty. And they will drive each other mad unless they have grown some imagination. Even enough to laugh.
Joyce Cary
I prefer the saddle to the streetcar and star-sprinkled sky to a roof, the obscure and difficult trail leading into the unknown to any paved highway, and the deep peace of the wild to the discontent bread by cities... it is enough that I am surrounded by beauty.
Everett Ruess
I will listen to a beautiful person much more quickly than a plain person, and I have to learn to be nice to people who are not attractive looking.
Beatrice Wood
This new world was a vicious, sleek world made of street lights and tight jeans, sharp smiles and fast cars. This was a city, edited. A city, pared down to its bare minimums, beautiful and abusive.
Maggie Stiefvater
Pain and beauty, our constant bedfellows
Nick Bantock
Painting reflects. It kills you in a colourful shower of emptiness. Flatness. Randomness. And beauty. Yes, it is the most pure beauty I have ever felt in my life.
Nigel Tomm
I don’t care to be pretty,” Blue shot back hotly, “I care to look on the outside like I look on the inside.
Maggie Stiefvater
Beauty is startling. She wears a gold shawl in the summer and sells seven kinds of honey at the flea market. She is young and old at once, my daughter and my grandmother. In school she excelled in mathematics and poetry. . . Beauty will dance with anyone who is brave enough to ask her.
J. Ruth Gendler
Beauty is not a need but an ecstasy.It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth,But rather a heart inflamed and a soul enchanted.It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear,But rather an image you see though you close your eyes and a song you hear though you shut your ears.It is not the sap within the furrowed bark, nor a win attached to a claw,But rather a garden forever in bloom and a flock of angels forever in flight.Beauty is life when life unveils her holy face. But you are life and you are the veil.Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in the mirror.But you are eternity and you are the mirror.
Kahlil Gibran
Beauty is life when life unveils her holy face. But you are life and you are the veil. Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. But you are eternity and you are the mirror.
Kahlil Gibran
Let me, O let me bathe my soul in colours; let me swallow the sunset and drink the rainbow.
Kahlil Gibran
True beauty is a rayThat springs from the sacred depths of the soul,and illuminates the body, just as lifesprings from the kernel of a stone andgives colour and scent to a flower.
Kahlil Gibran
Your clothes conceal much of your beauty, yet they hide not the unbeautiful.
Kahlil Gibran
Beauty should be edible, or not at all.
Salvador Dalí
It was a sort of ferocious, quiet beauty, the sort that wouldn't let you admire it. The sort of beauty that always hurt.
Maggie Stiefvater
I hate slick and pretty things. I prefer mistakes and accidents. Which is why I like things like cuts and bruises - they're like little flowers. I've always said that if you have a name for something, like 'cut' or 'bruise,' people will automatically be disturbed by it. But when you see the same thing in nature, and you don't know what it is, it can be very beautiful.
David Lynch
Beauty is a sign of intelligence.
Andy Warhol
The appearance of things changes according to the emotions; and thus we see magic and beauty in them, while the magic and beauty are really in ourselves.
Kahlil Gibran
The more things change, the more they stay the same. And, that's a whole other story.
Vivian Swift
Before prayer changes others, it first changes us.
Paul Silway
Now is the time to make sure we have the strings of all the balloons we want to keep before they all float away.
Maggie Stiefvater
When people are ready to, they change. They never do it before then, and sometimes they die before they get around to it. You can't make them change if they don't want to, just like when they do want to, you can't stop them.
Andy Warhol