You paint what you know best; what you went through as a teenager and child. My world is the one I got to know in Medellin; I never paint anything else other than that.
Fernando BoteroRead
An artist is born like a priest is born. If they are born an artist, I would tell them art is not a game: it is something very serious which completely requires everything you have to give.
Interpretation
Art is a serious pursuit that demands total dedication from the artist.
In this quote, Fernando Botero emphasizes the profound commitment required to be an artist, comparing the integrity of the artistic profession to that of a priest. He conveys that art is not a trivial pursuit, but rather a calling that demands complete and total investment from the individual, underscoring the weightiness and significance of the creative process.
In practice
During a motivational speech about pursuing one's passions, this quote can serve to highlight the seriousness of dedication.
You paint what you know best; what you went through as a teenager and child. My world is the one I got to know in Medellin; I never paint anything else other than that.
In a photo, you just do a click, but in art you have to put in so much energy. This concentration of energy and attention says something that other media cannot say.
Nobody ever told me, 'Art is this.' This was good luck in a way because I would have had to spend half of my life forgetting everything that I had been told, which is what happens with most students in schools of fine arts.
I love my country, and it hurts not to be able to see my country, as I did for so many years. I hope that I will one day be able to live in a peaceful Colombia.
I was drawing a mandolin, and I made the sound hole very small, which made the mandolin look gigantic. I saw that making the details small made the form monumental. So in my figures, the eyes, the mouth are all small, and the exterior form is huge.
When you start a painting, it is somewhat outside you. At the conclusion, you seem to move inside the painting.
Sculpture is something you bump into when you back up to look at a painting.
Christian art is the expression of the whole life of the whole person as a Christian. What a Christian portrays in his art is the totality of life. Art is not to be solely a vehicle for some sort of self-conscious evangelism.
You know, sound was still a fairly new thing when I came into movies. And the reason musicals happened is because of sound. They could put music in the picture! That's how it all began.
A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity. That is the only way one can judge it.
Mere color, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways.
I mean, every novel's a historical novel anyway. But calling something a historical novel seems to put mittens on it, right? It puts manners on it. And you don't want your novels to be mannered.
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