Artist Quotes

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  Contrary to general belief, an artist is never ahead of his time but most people are far behind theirs.

  Edgard Varese

  People, Belief, Behinds

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• I think every artist needs a rule that's stupid but that helps him, like a deadline would.

  Thomas Mars

  Stupid, Thinking, Helping

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• To me, paintings are about beauty. They are very feminine, and beauty is something very feminine. For a long time, people would talk with me about identity. I don't have issues with identity, I just follow this kind of feminine beauty because I became a victim of my art, which I think is the best thing for an artist. So many artists use their talent, but with the best artists, their talent uses them.

  Nir Hod

  Art, Thinking, Long

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Conscience is a man's compass.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Men, Compass, Express Yourself

  Vincent van Gogh, Vincent Willem Gogh (1927). “The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh to His Brother, 1872-1886: With a Memoir by His Sister-in-law, J. Van Gogh-Bonger ...”

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• I am an artist. For me, a picture is like poetry. When you make art, this is not coming from an intellectual place. It's coming from the deep side of your unconscious, your soul. And you are like in some kind of possession, where you are doing anything to get the visual. You become another person. You're becoming an artist in action. And then a lot of miracles come. A lot of discovering. It's a very complicated thing.

  Alejandro Jodorowsky

  Art, Miracle, Soul

  Source: film.avclub.com

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• Look at the great athletes, musician, artists, and writers. They all tap into a source. Some call that source God or soul or spirit or consciousness. The Seven Faces of Intention: creativity, kindness, love, beauty, expansion, abundance, and receptivity. And all seven are expressions of what I imagine that source to look like. The very fact that we exist is proof to me that the nature of that source is creative at its core. And there isn't a person reading this who does not have a gnawing sense inside that there's something they're here to do, something creative.

  Wayne Dyer

  Kindness, Reading, Creativity

  Source: www.drwaynedyer.com

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• I think that the whole experience of living, breathing, thinking, and being lost in wonderment is, for me, that of being an artist. And the idea of identifying as someone who is just living and existing and making objects or paintings-somehow I moved away from that years and years ago.

  Tony Shafrazi

  Thinking, Being An Artist, Moved

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I think that the first responsibility of an artist is to follow truth, and the innate original forces and energies that are within them. At the same time, I also think, collectively, that there has to be a place for artists to reflect and deal with the society they're living in. I think that great art inevitably reflects some of the drama and trauma and conflicts that exist in the outer world.

  Tony Shafrazi

  Art, Drama, Responsibility

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• As an artist your first loyalty is to your art. Unless this is the case, you're going to be a second-rate artist. I don't mean there's never any overlap. You learn things in one area and bring them into another area. But giving a speech against racism is not the same as writing a novel. The object is very clear in the fight against racism; you have reasons why you're opposed to it. But when you're writing a novel, you don't want the reader to come out of it voting yes or no to some question. Life is more complicated than that. Reality simply consists of different points of view.

  Margaret Atwood

  Loyalty, Art, Writing

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• I love poetry. It's at the heart of everything I do. Poetry transforms what we call language, and uses language as the stuff to become something else. I get spun around by what happens in words. When that occurs, it inspires images that seem so original to me as an artist, even though I'm following what the poem has offered.

  Ashley Bryan

  Heart, Inspire, Language

  Source: www.hbook.com

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• I think that artists don't make art - the art makes itself through us. I'm not the doer. I'm just along for the ride. Acting really reminds me of that because I don't write the words; I don't make the decisions. That's the director. Narcissism is a tragic condition. It must be so miserable to live trapped in a reflection that only includes the smallest version of our identities. Our true identities should have no bounds and no limits.

  Ezra Miller

  Art, Writing, Thinking

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Let me see: art and activism. I can always fall back on, "the question should be, what isn't political? Everything you do is political, even if it's abstract. You're making a political statement even if it's unwittingly." I think so much of art is unconscious anyway, the artist doesn't know the real reason they're doing it. They're just kind of going along with it intuitively.

  Eric Drooker

  Art, Real, Fall

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• It's very hard to find artists in the history of western art who don't make portraiture ideological in some way.

  Hilton Als

  Art, Western, Ideological

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I have always sought to be understood and, while I was taken to task by critics or colleagues, I thought they were right, assuming I had not been clear enough to be understood. This assumption allowed me to work my whole life without hatred and even without bitterness toward criticism, regardless of its source. I counted solely on the clarity of expression of my work to gain my ends. Hatred, rancor, and the spirit of vengeance are useless baggage to the artist. His road is difficult enough for him to cleanse his soul of everything which could make it more so.

  Henri Matisse

  Art, Taken, Expression

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• Every good painter paints what he is.

  Jackson Pollock

  Art, Paint, Famous Artist

  Jackson Pollock, Bernice Rose, Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.) (1980). “Jackson Pollock, drawing into painting”, Icon

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• As an artist, it is central to be unsatisfied.

  Lawrence Calcagno

  Conformity, Unsatisfied, Non Conformity

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  You have to systematically create confusion, it sets creativity free. Everything that is contradictory creates life

  Salvador Dali

  Art, Creativity, Confusion

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• Artists themselves are not confined, but their output is.

  Robert Smithson

  Art, Architecture, Output

  Robert Smithson, Jack D. Flam (1996). “Robert Smithson, the Collected Writings”, p.154, Univ of California Press

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• Subjective artists are one-eyed, but objective artists are blind.

  Georges Rouault

  Objectivity, Blind, Subjective

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• I paint flowers so they will not die.

  Frida Kahlo

  Flower, Paint, Dies

  "On Frida Kahlo's Birthday, Check Out Her 'Self-Portrait with Stalin'" by Nick Gillespie, reason.com. July 6, 2016.

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• A sincere artist is not one who makes a faithful attempt to put on to canvas what is in front of him, but one who tries to create something which is, in itself, a living thing.

  William Dobell

  Art, Faithful, Trying

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• Abstract painting is abstract. It confronts you. There was a reviewer a while back who wrote that my pictures didn't have any beginning or any end. He didn't mean it as a compliment, but it was.

  Jackson Pollock

  Mean, Abstract Painting, Compliment

  Interview, New Yorker, 5 Aug. 1950

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• True artists are almost the only men who do their work for pleasure.

  Auguste Rodin

  Art, Passion, Men

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• Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Art, Hands, Doe

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• Everything you can imagine is real.

  Pablo Picasso

  Inspirational, Meaningful, Art

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