# Inspirational Artistic Quotes



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

Come share your favorite quotes and inspire others. 

It is our function as artists to make the spectator see the world our way not his way...It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted...There is no such thing as a good painting about nothing. ~ Barnett Newman


Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting with the gift of speech. 
~ Simonides


Everything vanishes around me, and works are born as if out of the void. Ripe, graphic fruits fall off. My hand has become the obedient instrument of a remote will. ~ Paul Klee 


I never think I have finished a nude until I think I could pinch it. 
~ Pierre-Auguste Renoir


A paintiing is not a picture of an experience, it is an experience. ~
Mark Rothko


Painting or poetry is made as one makes love - a total embrace, prudence thrown to the winds, nothing held back. ~ Joan Miro


The artist must create a spark before he can make a fire and before art is born, the artist must be ready to be consumed by the fire of his own creation. ~ Auguste Rodin


Art cannot be separated from life. It is the expression of the greatest need of which life is capable, and we value art not because of the skilled product, but because of its revelation of a life’s experience. The artists who produce the most satisfactory art are in my mind those who are absorbed in the civilization in which they are living. ~ Robert Henri


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

kushy said:


> If I could say it in words there would be no reason to paint. - Edward Hopper.
> 
> Nice topic.


Your photography is beautiful kushy, love the Spring collection

"Trees are the earth's endless effort to speak to the listening heaven." ~ Rabindranath Tagore


What am I doing here? I am here to grow into full awareness of my true nature - which is peace, creativity and happiness ~ Yogani


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

On the floor I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more a part of the painting, since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting. ~ Jackson Pollock, on drip painting


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

Frida is a great movie showing us all how she created amazing works of art out of pain and beauty - how she saw it and dramatically experienced it. She was depicted by many as a warrior. 

"the average person see everything as a blessing or a curse. the warrior see everything as a challenge."
Juan Matus


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frida


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

When the artist is alive in any person, whatever his kind of work may be, he becomes an inventive, searching, daring, self-expressive creature. He becomes interesting to other people. He disturbs, upsets, enlightens, and opens ways for a better understanding. Where those who are not artists are trying to close the book, he opens it and shows there are still more pages possible. ~ Robert Henri, The Art Spirit, 1923


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

kushy said:


> Thank you Tricky.
> 
> The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
> Eleanor Roosevelt


Wonderful quote Kushy from a woman who overcame great odds in her life, took a stand for social injustice and became a human rights activist!


You _must_ do the things you think you cannot do. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

Art is a form of supremely delicate awareness...meaning at-oneness, the state of being at one with the object...The picture must all come out of the artist's inside...it is the image that lives in the consciousness, alive like a vision, but unknown. D.J. Lawrence, speaking about his paintings


----------



## corydulos (Apr 28, 2013)

"I serve whoever pays me" - Leonardo Da Vinci

"The only inspiration I ever needed was a call from my producer!" - George Gershwin


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

Welcome corydulos  

When Leonardo Da Vinci was asked to name his greatest accomplishments, he answered *♥*"Leonardo Da Vinci


What am I in the eyes of most people--a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person--somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then--even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart. That is my ambition, based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me. I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest corners. And my mind is driven towards these things with an irresistible momentum. ~ Vincent Van Gogh


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

During World War II, a German officer visited Pablo Picasso's studio and saw a sketch of "Guernica," Picasso's graphic painting of the Nazis' horrific devastation of the Spanish town. "Did you do this?" the officer asked, obviously disgusted. "No," Picasso replied. You did. ~ Meredith Benke http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guernica_(painting)


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. ~ William Faulkner


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

The highest reward for a person's toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it. ~ John Ruskin


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

kushy said:


> I'm not artistic nor am I all that creative.
> Henry Rollins


When we don't own what we do, we are always met with a creative spark to create something brand new.  

Humble living does not diminish. It fills. Going back to a simpler self gives wisdom.~ Jalal-Uddin Rumi


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

You follow
Your heart's love.
Your life's happiness
Will follow you. ~ Sri Chinmoy


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

Silence is our deepest nature, our home, our common ground, our peace. Silence Falling down the Rabbit Hole requires the capacity to “let go” and allow your imagination to take flight, giving form and vision to possibilities and impossibilities – before you let your mind tell you they are absurd, ridiculous, too expensive, and then that final blow, “What will people say?” What do you care what people say? I never have – and that is the great secret of the Rabbit Hole. You simply have to get over your fear of what other people think. For what possible reasons do you care what other people think?
~ Caroline Myss, from Alice Time: Choosing six Impossible Things to Believe In.


----------



## NEELRATAN (May 9, 2013)

art and poetry is the highest forms of imagination... which depicts reality in various forms.


----------



## NEELRATAN (May 9, 2013)

I nave no basic knowledge of Arts.. but it comes to me when i took brush in my hands.. I know I am not at all a good Artist.. but I really love to draw.. Art is my life.. I find peace in it,


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

NEELRATAN said:


> I nave no basic knowledge of Arts.. but it comes to me when i took brush in my hands.. I know I am not at all a good Artist.. but I really love to draw.. Art is my life.. I find peace in it,


Welcome NEELRATAN  We'd love to see your drawings when you're ready! I had no basic knowledge when starting to paint either. Experimenting with color and making a few mistakes along the way was my best teacher. 


Art is a spiritual, immaterial respite from the hardships of life. 
~ Fernando Botero, Colombian Artist


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

NEELRATAN said:


> I nave no basic knowledge of Arts.. but it comes to me when i took brush in my hands.. I know I am not at all a good Artist.. but I really love to draw.. Art is my life.. I find peace in it,


For you NEELRATAN......

“All experience is great providing you live through it. I would tell these classes of art students, the more experience you get, the better, if it doesn’t kill you. But if it kills you, you’ve gone too far. That’s all. You never learn anything like you learn by experiencing it.” 
~ Alice Neel


----------



## NEELRATAN (May 9, 2013)

Very much true


----------



## NEELRATAN (May 9, 2013)

Nature is the best teacher........ close observation of nature encourages me to take brush in my hands...


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

Nature often holds up a mirror so we can see more clearly the ongoing processes of growth, renewal and transformation in our lives. ~ Mary Ann Brussat


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

Artistic temperament sometimes seems a battleground, a dark angel of destruction and a bright angel of creativity wrestling. ~ Madeleine L'Engle


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

Fill your paper [canvas] with the breathings of your heart. ~ William Wordsworth


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. ~ Martha Graham


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

[The artist] speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain; to the latent feeling of fellowship with all creation--and to the subtle but invincible conviction of solidarity in dreams, in joy, in sorrow, in aspirations, in illusions, in hope, in fear…which binds together all humanity--the dead to the living and the living to the unborn.
~ Joseph Conrad


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

kushy said:


> "Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise; seek what they sought."--Baslo


This holds such wisdom, it's worth repeating!


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything. ~ Napoleon Hill


----------



## NEELRATAN (May 9, 2013)

art is important than artist..but artist is an integral part of art.. so both are important


----------



## NEELRATAN (May 9, 2013)

Art is the inner search of one to find out who he/she is


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

Enter into the mist
of the cloud of unknowing
beyond the restraints
of boundaries we so carefully build
in thousands of ways
and feel the spinning fields
of energy
out of which we are invited
to create....
~ Naomi Stone


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

...at the time when you spoke of my becoming a painter, I thought it very impractical and would not hear of it. What made me stop doubting was reading a clear book on perspective, Cassange's Guide to the ABC of drawing, and a week later I drew the interior of a kitchen with stove, chair, table and window--in their places and on their legs--whereas before it had seemed to me that getting depth and the right perspective into a drawing was witchcraft or pure chance. ~ Vincent Van Gogh, in a letter to his brother, Theo who had suggested that Vincent become a painter.


Sometimes others are better at seeing our potential.


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

Art is not what you see, but what you make others see. ~ Edgar Degas


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another
dimension - a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You're moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You've just crossed over into the Twilight Zone. 
~ Rod Serling, Twilight Zone


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

Every day I seated myself at my work table, stayed an hour or two, tried a great number of combinations and reached no results. _One evening, contrary to my custom, I drank black coffee and could not sleep. Ideas rose in crowds; I felt them collide until pairs interlocked, so to speak, making a stable combination_. By the next morning I had established the existence of a class of Fuchsian functions, those which come from the hypergeometric series; I had only to write out the results, which took but a few hours. ~ Henri Poincare


----------



## Seven (Aug 18, 2013)

"I paint because the spirits whisper madly inside my head.”
- El Greco


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

I'm enjoying your quotes kushy; welcome Seven, keep them coming! 



"Having bought the colours, an easel, and a canvas, the next step was to begin. But what a step to take! The palette gleamed with beads of colour; fair and white rose the canvas; the empty brush hung poised, heavy with destiny, irresolute in the air. My hand seemed arrested by a silent veto. But after all the sky on this occasion was unquestionably blue, and a pale blue at that. There could be no doubt that blue paint mixed with white should be put on the top part of the canvas. One really does not need to have had an artist’s training to see that. It is a starting-point open to all. So very gingerly I mixed a little blue paint on the palette with a very small brush, and then with infinite precaution made a mark about as big as a bean upon the affronted snow-white shield. It was a challenge, a deliberate challenge; but so subdued, so halting, indeed so cataleptic, that it deserved no response. At that moment the loud approaching sound of a motor-car was heard in the drive. From this chariot there stepped swiftly and lightly none other than the gifted wife of Sir John Lavery. "Painting! But what are you hesitating about? Let me have a brush - the big one." Splash into the turpentine, wallop into the blue and the white, frantic flourish on the palette - clean no longer - and then several large, fierce strokes and slashes of blue on the absolutely cowering canvas. Anyone could see that it could not hit back. No evil fate avenged the jaunty violence. The canvas grinned in helplessness before me. The spell was broken. The sickly inhibitions rolled away. I seized the largest brush and fell upon my victim with Berserk fury. I have never felt any awe of a canvas since." ~ Painting as a pastime by Winston Churchill, 1932


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

The work of art must seize upon you, wrap you up in itself, carry you away. It is the means by which the artist conveys his passion; it is the current which he puts forth which sweeps you along in his passion. ~ Pierre-Auguste Renoir


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

Let me, oh, let me, Bathe my soul in colours; Let me swallow the sunset, And drink the rainbow... ~ Khalil Gibran


----------



## NEELRATAN (May 9, 2013)

Art is nothing but forming and deforming self and then deforming and forming


----------



## NEELRATAN (May 9, 2013)

I NEVER WENT TO A ART SCHOOL.. SO I DO NOT HAVE ANY BASICS OF ART.. BUT STILL i USE TO DRAW AND PAINT..AS IT GIVES ME IMMENSE PLEASURE.. i REALLY DO NOT KNOW IF THEY ARE AT ALL ART BEFORE THE WORLD BUT TO ME ALL IS ART AS IT COMES FROM THE CORE OF MY HEART


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

The painter has the Universe in his mind and hands. ~Leonardo da Vinci


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

I would like to paint the way a bird sings. 
― Claude Monet


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

Your soul is a seeker, lover, and artist, shape shifting through archetypal fields of energy, between your darkness and light, your body and spirit, your heaven and hell, until you land in the sweet moment of surrender when you, as dancer, disappear in the dance ~ Gabrielle Roth


----------



## NEELRATAN (May 9, 2013)

All is artists in his/hers own capacity.. Only those who take a different path then the conventional become great


----------



## NEELRATAN (May 9, 2013)

i WILL NOT GO FOR NEAR REALITY OR PERFECTION.. RATHER I WILL GO FOR BEYOND REALITY.. LET IMAGINATION FLOW TOWARDS ETERNITY


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance. ~ Aristotle


----------



## corydulos (Apr 28, 2013)

"This drawing is also a resurrection of my art. I know what this will look like at the end. It will not be a reproduction of a photo lke Jeff and Blue Angel do. It will be a two dimensional sculpture carved with shaky hands tracking Stone's face mostly from memory as weakened eyes use a blurred photo for guidance of shape but not details. I can not express how difficult this is."

-*DLeeG*, Artist Forum, 2013


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

And we your friends and support group applaud you DLeeg! We have no way of knowing what you're going through but we have a sense your true nature is emerging and it feels wondrous doesn't it! Look at nature it is forever changing, expanding, contracting...its very essence is movement and we ourselves are truly connected its constant self-renewing!

There's a lot of emotion in this room Dleeg and a lot of caring. That caring keeps growing as people share and keep helping one another. 

Thanks for posting Corydulos!!


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

I believe in the imagination. What I cannot see is infinitely more important than what I can see. ~ Duane Michals


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

Whatsoever that be within us that feels, thinks, desires, and animates, is something celestial, divine, and, consequently, imperishable. 
~ Aristotle


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

The secret of ""fusion"" is the fact that the artist's eye sees in nature . . . an inexhaustible wealth of tension , rhythms, continuities, and contrasts which can be rendered in line and color. ~ Suzanne K. Langer


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

The graced eye can glimpse beauty anywhere. When we beautify our gaze - the grace of hidden beauty becomes our joy and our sanctuary ~ John O'Donohue



It is only when the mind is very quiet that you can really observe - for then the mind is very sensitive to extraordinary beauty ~ J.Krishnamurti


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous. ~ Bill Moyers


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

If you're going to be an artist, all life is your subject. And all your experience is part of your art. A youngster told me recently that he was going to give himself a year to see if he has talent. A year! It takes a lifetime to see if you have it. Painting is a total engagement. ~ Ben Shahn


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

Cooking is one of the best ways for your authentic self to remind your conscious self that you are an artist. Like the union of canvas and pigment, cooking is alchemy, a work of Wholeness-in-progress.~Susan Ban Breathnach


----------



## NEELRATAN (May 9, 2013)

Not one life time it needs many life times to be an artist.. So we are just in the road.. And very well know that will never reach the destination


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

My job is not to direct anything, but only to filter into many colors. My answer is destiny and my guide is joy. And there you have me. ~ C. JoyBell C.


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

Dreams are like the paints of a great artist. Your dreams are your paints, the world is your canvas. Believing, is the brush that converts your dreams into a masterpiece of reality. ~ Anonymous


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

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


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

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


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

Who but the artist has the power to open man up, to set free the imagination? The others - priest, teacher, saint, statesman, warrior - hold us to the path of history. They keep us chained to the rock, that the vultures may eat out our hearts. It is the artist who has the courage to go against the crowd; he is the unrecognized "hero of our time" - and of all time. ~ Henry Miller


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

For me, success as an artist means 
that I am able to live my life with creativity and joy.
~Fidel Garcia


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

“... an artist should paint from the heart, and not always what people expect. Predictability often leads to the dullest work, in my opinion, and we have been bored stiff long enough I think.” 
~ E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

“Follow your bliss.
If you do follow your bliss,
you put yourself on a kind of track
that has been there all the while waiting for you,
and the life you ought to be living
is the one you are living.
When you can see that,
you begin to meet people
who are in the field of your bliss,
and they open the doors to you.
I say, follow your bliss and don't be afraid,
and doors will open
where you didn't know they were going to be.
If you follow your bliss,
doors will open for you that wouldn't have opened for anyone else.”

~ Joseph Campbell


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

…find freedom, aliveness, and power not from what contains, locates, or protects us, but from what dissolves, reveals, and expands us. ~ Eve Ensler


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

I do not know whether behind appearances there lives and moves a secret essence superior to me. Nor do I ask, Nor do I care, I create phenomena in swarms, and paint with a full palette a gigantic and gaudy curtain before the abyss. Do not say, 'Draw the curtain that I may see the painting.' The curtain is the painting.
~ Nikos Kazantakis.


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

Yes, it sure has been a long, hard climb.
Train wheels runnin' through the back of my memory,
When I ran on the hilltop following a pack of wild geese.
Someday, everything is gonna be smooth like a rhapsody
When I paint my masterpiece. ~ Bob Dylan


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

Imagination is the outreaching of mind . . . . the bombardment of the conscious mind with ideas, impulses, images and every sort of psychic phenomena welling up from the preconscious. It is the capacity to 'dream dreams and see visions . . . 
~Rollo May


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

Once you love an art enough that you can be taken up in it, you are able to experience an echo of the great creative act that mysteriously has given life to us all.
"It may be the closest any of us can get to God."
-- Julio Mateo


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

Each day is a new canvas to paint upon. Make sure your picture is full of life and happiness, and at the end of the day you don't look at it and wish you had painted something different.

~ Author Unknown


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

My role in society, or any artist or poet's role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all. 
~ John Lennon


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

He who works with his hands is a laborer.
He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman.
He who works with his hands and his head and his heart 
is an artist. ~ St. Francis of Assisi


----------



## tricky raven (Aug 2, 2013)

Life's Canvas By Edgar Guest 

Sunshine and shadow and laughter and tears,
These are forever the paints of the years,
Splashed on the canvas of life day by day,
We are the artists, the colors are they.
We are the painters, the pigments we use
Never we're wholly permitted to chose.
Grief with its gray tint and joy with its red
Come from life's tubes to be blended and spread.

Here at the easel, the brushes at hand,
Each for a time is permitted to stand.
White was the canvas when first we began,
Ready to picture the life of a man.
Now we are splashing the pigments about,
Knowing the reds and blues must give out,
Soon we must turn to the dull hues and gray,
Painting the sorrows that darken the way.

Now with the sunshine and now with the shade
Slowly but surely the picture is made.
Even the gray tints with beauty may glow
Recalling the joy of the lost long ago.
Let me not daub it with doubt and despair,
Deeds that are hasty, unkind and unfair,
But when the last bit of pigment is dried
Let me look back at my canvas with pride.


----------

