Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Sentimental titles are the last bastion of scoundrels, and can add significant barf to an already barfy work.
It's okay to doubt. It's important to test. The way to discover secrets is to be a student of your own efforts.
We artists give daily thanks for the miracle of our planet and for the inclination and the capability to honour it.
Art thrives on a difference of opinion. My treasure is your junk, sort of thing. Life would be dull if we all agreed.
I've come to realize that companionship and mild competition can help build quality and lay the ground for excellence.
Art is a Great Goddess of infinite intrigue and illusion, and even a lifetime of worship may not find her fickle soul.
Incompetence, in my books, is the failure of the critical faculties to interfere constructively with the natural flow.
Watch the greater image materialize. You need that thing over there to tell you what to do about that thing over here.
Accepting the gift may take the accumulated wisdom of some trodden miles, but it also opens the welcome windows of joy.
The overly-verbal artist is led by his understanding of things--rather than by direct observation of things as they are.
Never forget that the nurturing and preservation of your own muse is job one. Lose it and you may be losing a great deal.
While Mojo suggests any art that invokes supernatural powers, for us creators Mojovation means finding magic in what we do.
Artists are supposed to be the ones with imagination. A good part of our job description is to get regular people to use theirs.
Artists... do not need the applause or condemnation of the critics, the ideas of other artists, or the demands of the collectors.
I simply like the monumentality of the subjects - the opportunity for metaphor and the varied light that comes with high altitudes.
Your muse is amused and willed to further renewal during the process of mindless grabbing of reference material or errant imaginings.
As self-governing entities, artists have a profound interest in change. Embracing change, we embrace growth and we embrace our future.
An abstract title suggests another value to the subject, perhaps an artistic quality that sets the viewers' sensitivities into action.
The guy may be totally motivated, connected and inspired, but if he doesn't know how to do it, he's not the guy to take out your appendix.
The brilliance of art as a collectible is that it has a way of reaching out on an emotional level. It touches on mystery, even spirituality.
A method of achieving wild enthusiasm is to act wildly enthusiastic. Often, a growing and beautiful love-affair develops quite automatically.
Learning to focus and pay attention, if only for a short time, has been identified as a primary key to the development of human effectiveness.
While obsessive behavior may be an antisocial plague to societies and communities at large, it's total moxie when lone practitioners catch it.
Critics are the products of their own times and biases and what they have to say about works of art is as transient and insubstantial as fashion.
It's my wish that I can help creative people think of new ways to be creative - to get more joy and understanding from their own unique processes.
Don't assume there is only one way. Don't assume that mistakes are a bad thing. Don't think for one minute that everyone agrees with what 'good' is.
A simple equation for the production of successful art work is lots of reference material plus lots of art supplies equals lots of painting happiness.
I do know, for most of us, the very best of times are when you're in your own space sweating, trying to squeeze quality out of imperfect capabilities.
While this may seem peculiar, the combo of work and distraction leads to levels of innovation not often generated by structured, focused thinking alone.
An early flourish of confidence is useful. Then there's the small crudities - the slubs and bumps that come with outdoor work - the odd charm of imprecision.
Artspeak is an arcane writing style that can result in a vocabulary of obscurities... Today, some of the more spectacular examples are in artist's statements.
Pushing yourself to extremes blows out the cobwebs of trusted habit. It shakes up what you know to be reliably safe and substitutes the miracle of insecurity.
Sometimes you can be lucky enough to establish a working relationship with another artist who takes away the loneliness, particularly in travel and outdoor work.
I suppose what you're doing as a painter is making a record of your trip through life. I can't think of any job that is quite as satisfactory as doing a painting.
My app is the same juicy paint used by Vincent Van Gogh; my screen is the woven canvas of Titian. Painting by hand, I've come to figure, is a certain kind of love.
The artist needs to sit patiently at the feet of Nature in all Her moods and nuances and silently develop the skills to honour Her. There are no recipes for Autumn.
Now familiar with my own particular voice and accent, my Dragon app prints out exactly what I speak into my iPad. Twenty years ago this miracle would be unthinkable.
Take your brush here and there like a bee in an alpine meadow. In other words, don't laboriously work on or try to finish off one particular part. Paint promiscuously.
Music is the most abstract of the arts and it expresses the sound of the universe itself. These are the real rhythms that stimulate the artist's mind and guide his hand.
A young person wanting to become an artist might simply go purposefully and dedicatedly to his or her room with a few books and a thousand blank canvases for four years.
Many of us knuckle-dragging brush-painters think that 'behind the times' is part of our job description. Why deny ourselves the authentic journey of a time-honoured form?
Creativity is dynamic, it asserts life, frees the human spirit, conquers mental lassitude and illness, and makes real the outrageous potential of the universal imagination.
Regarding ego force, we don't always like people who have it. If you have it, and need to be liked, you ought to consider letting most of it come out the end of your brush.
I have always found it a testament to the importance of painting that the first thing many people do when their home is on fire is to grab their paintings and then run out.
The centipede has rhythm and flow in its hundred legs precisely because it does not have to think about it. Consider this the next time you move the instruments of your art.
Great paintings have gradations, large and small... They serve to lift the subject off the two-dimensionality of the canvas. Gradations are an essential abstract convention.
Our bodies, apart from their brilliant role as drawing exercises, are the temples of our being. Like the bodies of all fauna, they deserve both our study and our appreciation.
We are trying to evoke and reinforce meanings from the spaces we cover and the times we're given. Short or long this becomes our purpose. What we artists do is important stuff.
Once as I sat painting, I became aware of a man's face hovering near me, moving closer and closer to the panel I was working on. When he spoke he said, 'That is a fantastic brush!
The Canadian painter A. Y. Jackson noted that 'failure of sight' was a tiresome problem. He meant we should be able to look at our work-in-progress as if it were previously unseen.