Best 8185 quotes in «artist quotes» category

The boy took my sketchbook.

The complete recipe for imagination is absolute boredom.

The creative journey is not a trek through the wilderness, but actually a clearly defined path, which though not visible to our outside eyes, can be felt with our inner senses.

The creative mind is a divine force.

The creative mind can turn chaos into a master piece and call it Art.

The data on the economic utility of artists is really, really strong. Artists and entrepreneurs are the same people...and of course entrepreneurs are the people who provide all of the vision for the entire capitalist system. They're absolutely necessary. But conservatives tend to be so blind to art that they can't even see that the artists are the ones who drive the economy forward!

The depths of her thoughts will have you never wanting to surface for air...

The depth of your art is subject to originality; Your own authentic style.

The dictators, commanders or emperors who want to conquer the world soon realize that the world has already been conquered by the artists and their arts!

The estimation of an artist's talent is often based on his ability to render both light and shadow. If you have any choice in the matter, spend your time seeking the former.

The gestalt of living in the desert, surrounded by the desert, was a big influence in my life and in the lives of other artists in this community. There are many artists and musicians who grew up as lonely kids in the desert with nothing to do, and who chose to channel their focus inward. In the Mojave Desert, numinous, mystical experiences are not as rare as one might think. The numinous is a part of the whole artistic experience for the desert artist.

The glory that is given to God by the works of his creation is what we call an “external glory.” It is something outside of God. It doesn’t actually add anything to God. It is very much like an artist who has a great talent for painting and a mind full of beautiful images. If the artist puts some of those images on canvas for people to look at and admire, it still hasn’t added anything to the artist himself. It hasn’t made him any better or more wonderful than he was before (p. 5).

The greatest magicians know every single thought their audience is thinking. They know every thought their audience could think and might think and will think. They choose to either prove them right or trick them again and again. A mixture of the two, however, is perfect. There are no greater storytellers in the world then magicians. Who could make you question your reality as well as a magician can disappear and reappear in the seat beside you? Who else, other than a magician, could bring their final act into your dreams? Who could build a narrative and finish it with as big a finale than a magician?

The greatest artists express their inner self; an artist paints her rage; a writer pens his fear; a dancer expresses her sadness through movement; and a musician's loneliness echoes in his performance.

The god of art neither has religion nor gender or color or any shape. All he does is sit inside me and smile every time I look inside myself and ask him a question. A smile that resembles a silver lining on the darkest cloud. A smile that cuts me off from my reality and throws me into infinity and beyond. At that moment, all I can feel is floating in a place that doesn't have gravity and looking at the memories of the people who have asked him the same questions before.

The greatest artist and web-designer ever is indeed a spider!

The hardest part about walking away from someone is the part where you realize that, no matter how slowly you go, they will never run after you.

The hardest thing is to do something which is close to nothing because it is demanding all of you.

The history of time is captured by poet, artist, writer, photographer…!

The highest duty of the writer is to remain true to himself and let the chips fall where they may. In serving his vision of the truth the artist best serves his nation.

The here, the now and the individual have always been the special concern of the saint, the artist, the poet and -- from time immemorial--the woman.

The main criticism was really “he just presses a filter and gets these images.” But then they’d realize that I had learned how to paint and how to draw—that I had paid my dues, and I’d also been a graphic artist and a technical illustrator. And so I was able to show that I could draw with technical pens—and do anything that anyone else could do—and yet still was fascinated by this, and that sort of opened people up a little bit more. The more they knew about me, the more open they were to my explorations in the digital field.

The hours tick by as I lie in bed. Memories keep surfacing, tormenting me into unbelievable sadness. I can't bring myself to move. I can't fight the memories that keep filling my thoughts. I stay curled in the fetal position as each memory plays out. I can't stop them from coming. I can't make them go away. Nothing can distract me. I can't block the memories, so they continue to come.

The lush greenness of the pastures infused Shiloh. Overhead, she saw a red-tailed hawk flying in higher and higher circles in the sky. There were bluebirds everywhere, many of them sitting on fence posts. When they took off, that flash of brilliant blue always made her gasp with delight; it was almost an unearthly gorgeous color.

Their dancing was simple and expert and reminded her of something one of her art teachers told her about bad artists taking something simple and making it seem complicated while good artists took something very complex and made it seem simple. The couple was an illustration of this rule; the dance seemed barely to qualify for the term--in essence they seemed merely to be walking, slowly in lockstep. They would stop occasionally, the woman led into a simple ocho and then resume their slow, meditative procession. They seemed, to Rosalind's untrained eye, to be under a spell.

The key to being an artist lies in one's sensitivity to the things which are normally overlooked. If you want to create images - learn how to observe. If you want to create sound - learn how to listen

The longer Ellen Cherry thought about it, the more convinced she became that the mission of the artist in an overtechnologized, overmasculinized society was to call the old magic back to life. Could it be done? Yeah, you pessimistic wimps, it could. Could she do it? Probably not, but she could give it a whirl.

The machinery of the sky that confounds us on earth with endless transformations of clouds in the light of dawn does not compare to the extraordinary tenacity of human beings, the way of human life, the presentiment of approaching death, the existence of love, the brilliant coruscations of light and the dark scars of our lives, to say nothing of the incomprehensible form of the cosmos and the overwhelming mysteries of space, time, distance.

The Marquesa would even have been astonished to learn that her letters were very good, for such authors live always in the noble weather of their own minds and those productions which seem remarkable to us are little better than a day's routine to them.

The message of love or beauty or hope needs to be said by a hundred thousand different voices, written by a hundred thousand different pens, at a hundred thousand different times in history, different places in the world, different sectors of society, in different genres and registers, simply to be heard by the billions of ears and hearts that lie waiting for a truth which fires their soul, answers their question, speaks to their heart.

The Mojave Desert is a harsh, but very spiritual, place. It’s as much a matrix as anything else in my life has been. Growing up in the desert has a different gestalt than growing up in a temperate zone, with its humidity and rainfall. As children growing up in the Mojave, we chased lizards and snakes, instead of frogs and squirrels. There is an arid openness about it, and a true feeling of being alone, that you don’t get in any other type of environment.

The only critic I listen to is the man in the mirror—so if you want to talk, meet me at my vanity.

The object of the artist is the creation of the beautiful. What the beautiful is is another question.

The only obligation any artist can have is to himself. His works means nothing, otherwise. It has no meaning.

The music that enters your soul is greater than the melody that enters your ears.

The only way to find art is to lose touch with reality.

The philosophers write about things as they are and as they appear to be, but as an artist I find that appearance is everything.

The pen provides a pathway for the musings of the heart.

The other day, when I was deciding where to place a mountain range, how to make a river's flow detour around underground stalactite caves, and what precise color to give the sky at sunset, I realized I was God... or an artist and a writer.

The painter copies this bed from one point of view. He is thus at three removes from reality. He does not understand the bed, he does not measure it, he could not make it.

The picture is a flash of color stories. No one can imagine a picture that has no story.

The really magical things are the ones that happen right in front of you. A lot of the time you keep looking for beauty, but it is already there. And if you look with a bit more intention, you see it.

The purpose of art is to give the traveling human race an improved map that shows the way to itself. If art isn't for *that*, what is it for?

The purpose of art is to create heavens to balance the world because there are so many hells in the world, there are wars, tortures and oppressions, there is unhappiness etc.

There are 2 kinds of artists, essentially: those who want to make something popular, and those who want to make something dignified. But then there is still that rare hybrid case, and perhaps by that unintentional stroke of genius, in which one's work uncontrollably becomes both popular and dignified yet beyond its time.

There is a journey that all must take regardless of its direction or apparent meaning. An artist plucks out their heart, holds it forth, and be it through agony or ecstasy, is prepared to be measured for the gift that is the highest honor, to create, and therein be judged on those merits alone. And, somewhere in the skein of all creation is that which demands of those whom would aspire to create beauty and wonder, no matter the cost, because creation, all of it, is worth every ounce the pain of its birth. From the novel, Diminished Fifth

There is a kind of despair involved in creation which I am sure any artist knows all about. In art, as in morality, great things go by the board because at the crucial moment we blink our eyes. When is the crucial moment? Greatness is to recognize it and be able to hold it and to extend it. But for most of us the space between 'dreaming on things to come' and 'it is too late, it is all over' is too tiny to enter. And so we let each thing go, thinking vaguely that it will always be given to us to try again. Thus works of art, and thus whole lives of men, are spoilt by blinking and moving quickly on. I often found that I had ideas for stories, but by the time I had thought them out in detail they seemed to me hardly worth writing, as if I had already 'done' them: not because they were bad, but because they already belonged to the past and I had lost interest. My thoughts were soon stale to me. Some things I ruined by starting them too soon. Others by thinking them so intensely in my head that they were over before they began. Projects would change in a second from hazy uncommitted dreams into unsalvageable ancient history. Whole novels existed only in their titles.

There is a juiciness to creativity, a succulence that comes up from within, a sensuality which both produces and is soothed by the act and product of creativity. Creativity is pleasing to us on a deep level. Be it the feel of clay in our hands, the colors that make us feel alive as we knit or sew, the meaning that we find in the words that we write, the energizing feel of movement as we dance and the music moves through our bodies. Taking part in creativity helps us to be more fully alive on every level, it asks that we engage with life in a visceral, and interactive way.

There is only one thing left for you to do,” John Sloan advised one artist. “Pull off your socks and try with your feet.

There is no revelation in my words. I am merely stating what others have forgotten to write down.