Artist

Being an artist is about creative freedom. I want to save the world and that’s why social commentary is always present in my work. It’s easy to live with your eyes shut but that’s not fulfilling or helpful to the world.

— Artist

A writer — and, I believe, generally all persons — must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.

— Artist

Artists shouldn't be made famous.

— Artist

An artist is a man of action, whether he creates a personality, invents an expedient, or finds the issue of a complicated situation.

— Artist

Let us consider two important factors, the two poles of the creation of art: the artist on one hand, and on the other the spectator who later becomes the posterity; to all appearances the artist acts like a mediumistic being who, from the labyrinth beyond time and space, seeks his way out to a clearing.

— Artist

Just picture it to yourself," he would explain. "From the depths of the universe, millions of eyes are looking down, and what do they see? A dull, monochrome grey mass crawling and crawling over the earth, then suddenly, like a pistol shot — a bright red blob! That's me going outside.

— Artist

Great artists are people who find the way to be themselves in their art. Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike.

— Artist

I have come to the conclusion that a work of art restricted to what the artist has put in it is only a part of itself. It only attains full stature with what people and time make of it. It involves the whole complex of human relation to life. It is a mode of thinking, acting, perceiving and living.

— Artist

The studio, a room to which the artist consigns himself for life, is naturally important, not only as workplace, but as a source of inspiration. And it usually manages, one way or another, to turn up in his product.

— Artist

The name of Leonardo da Vinci will be invoked by artists to prove that only a great artist can be a great technician. The name of Leonardo da Vinci will be invoked by technicians to prove that only a great technician can be a great artist.

— Artist

The Joker I now do what other people only dream. I make art until someone dies. See? I am the world's first fully functioning homicidal artist.

— Artist

If we are to change our world view, images have to change. The artist now has a very important job to do. He's not a little peripheral figure entertaining rich people, he's really needed.

— Artist

The artist tries to see what there is to be interested in... He has not created something, he has seen something.

— Artist

Dead he is not, but departed,—for the artist never dies.

— Artist

It is only after years of preparation that the young [artist] should touch color — not color used descriptively, that is, but as a means of personal expression.

— Artist

We’re creators by permission, by grace as it were. No one creates alone, of and by himself. An artist is an instrument that registers something already existent, something which belongs to the whole world, and which, if he is an artist, he is compelled to give back to the world.

— Artist

The observation of nature is part of an artist's life, it enlarges his form-knowledge, keeps him fresh and from working only by formula, and feeds inspiration

— Artist

There is one quality I find in all the artists I admire most - men like Masaccio, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Cezanne. I mean a disturbing element, a distortion, giving evidence of a struggle of some sort.

— Artist

The social outcome of the arts and crafts movement was not commensurate with the needs of the new situation; as Mr. Frank Lloyd Wright pointed out in his memorable speech at Hull House in 1908, the machine itself was as much an instrument of art, in the hands of an artist, as were the simple tools and utensils.

— Artist

To express himself well, the artist should be hidden... The trouble is that if an artist knows he has genius, he's done for. The only salvation is to work like a labourer, and not have delusions of grandeur.

— Artist

The artist who uses the least of what is called imagination, will be the greatest!

— Artist

In a time when so many artists have learned to confabulate with extremes of horror and alienation, the most daring thing an artist can do is to fill a book, a gallery, or a theater with joy, hope, and beauty.

— Artist

In framing an artist, art hath thus decreed,To make some good, but others to exceed.

— Artist

Dead artists always bring out an older, richer crowd.

— Artist

It was Homer who gave laws to the artist.

— Artist

For an artist there is no more serious and, at the same time, more joyous task than to create, through art, a new aesthetic, and ultimately, a new way of being.

— Artist

The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work.

— Artist