Quotes on Being An Artist

The easy part of being an artist is figuring out the message that everyone else is ready to hear. The hard part is waiting for the proper lull to make the announcement.

Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.

It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academicism.

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

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

Being an artist is this kind of occupation in which you have to make people care about your obsession.

Art must be an expression of love or it is nothing.

In times of widespread chaos and confusion, it has been the duty of more advanced human beings--artists, scientists, clowns and philosophers--to create order. In times such as ours, however, when there is too much order, too much management, too much programming and control, it becomes the duty of superior men and women to fling their favorite monkey wrenches into the machinery. To relive the repression of the human spirit, they must sow doubt and disruption.

The main thing is to be moved, to love, to hope, to tremble, to live. Be a man before being an artist!

It became like a symbolic thing, to be “an artist.” After Duchamp, I realized that being an artist is more about a lifestyle and attitude than producing some product.

Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.

An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world.

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.

An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.

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

The worst thing that being an artist could do to you would be that it would make you slightly unhappy constantly.

When an artist stopped being a child, he would stop being an artist.

Being an artist doesn’t take much, just everything you got. Which means, of course, that as the process is giving you life, it is also bringing you closer to death. But it’s no big deal. They are one in the same and cannot be avoided or denied. So when I totally embrace this process, this life/death, and abandon myself to it, I transcend all this meaningless gibberish and hang out with the gods. It seems to me that that is worth the price of admission.

If you are wiling to do something that might not work, you are closer to being an artist.

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.

Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.