Being An Artist Quotes

If I had the capabilities of being something other than I am, I would. It's no fun being an artist. You know what it's like, writing, it's torture. ~ John Lennon

The teacher is of course an artist, but being an artist does not mean that he or she can make the profile, can shape the students. What the educator does in teaching is to make it possible for the students to become themselves. ~ Paulo Freire

Being an artist is celebrating life. ~ Henry Moore

That's the thing about being an artist, you don't have to take anyone else's perspective into account. You can act as self-indulgent in your emotions as you want. ~ Jessica Origliasso

[I'm] a sponge, the more I absorb, the more I am able to articulate my vision, as artists do, like Picasso. I'm an artist in that light. I went from being an artist to an artiste. ~ Usher

I never considered myself an artist. I aspire to be an artist, but I never thought I had the depth or substance or gift to be an artist. I do think I have some talent, but it doesn't go as far as being an artist. ~ Woody Allen

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 completely, I transcend all this gibberish and hang out with the gods. It seems to me that that is worth the price of admission. ~ Hubert Selby, Jr.

Learning how to code and program computers when I was a kid was one of the best choices I made growing up. By writing code, I learned how to bring my dreams to life, how to budget, and how to build stuff. Whatever path you choose in life - being an artist, an engineer, a lawyer, a teacher, or even a politician, you will give yourself a huge leg up if you learn how to code. ~ Robert Glaser

In Europe, being an artist is a form of behavior. In America, it's an excuse for a form of behavior. ~ William Faulkner

Practicality continues to be a challenge for me - it's at odds with being an artist. I actually had a career on stage in New York - not a brilliant career or I'd still be doing it - but I got enough work to keep my agent and my union health insurance. ~ Debra Dean

The artists who have inspired me the most in my life are the ones who have really had something to say and stand up for. That, to me, is part of being an artist-having the voice to express things that need to be verbalized and brought to light. Unfortunately, I don't think that's a priority for people, because the few artists who do have the nerve to take a stand for what they believe get shut down in a way. ~ Alicia Keys

Being an artist is nothing, or at least, not enough; what you want is to be a poet. ~ Luc Delahaye

Being an artist is not exactly the most universally respected, or secure thing to do with your life. It can be frightening and you can feel that you're taking a lot of risks just with your own life, and your family's security. But the rewards outweigh those things. ~ Joan Osborne

Other than being an artist, I've also wanted to be a writer since I was able to read. The simple fact is that I've aslo been a writer my whole life. Thanks to the magic of blogs and self-publishing, anyone can be a writer now. In fact, even before all of these new and exciting outlets became available anyone still could be a writer. It's actually a simple process. Just begin writing. You don't need anyone's permission, or a degree; hell, you don't even need an audience. Just write. The act of writing makes you a writer. So now that I've completed this book, I dub myself an Official Writer. ~ Cee Jay Inky Jones

Being an artist is being an isolated individual. ~ Asger Jorn

A true artist could and should create till the day they die. You don't ever fail as an artist until you quit being an artist. ~ Christian Keiber

Everybody needs a release. Sometimes people mosh at my shows. That inspired me to make records to get the people more crunk. People need a release and I enjoy being an artist that can do that for people. ~ Yelawolf

In the end, I feel that one has to have a bit of neurosis to go on being an artist. A balanced human seldom produces art. It's that imbalance which impels us. I often think that all I want to do now is to avoid suicide, accidental or otherwise. Other than that, I think living on the edge is what drives my work and me beyond a certain point. The artist lives with anxiety. When you finally reach a plateau of achievement, there comes a new anxiety - the hunger to push on still further. That angst is what makes you go forward. ~ Beverly Pepper

Being an artist, it's always tempting to measure success through other people's eyes, be they critics, journalists or audiences. ~ Sara Blecher

When an artist stops being a child, he stops being an artist. ~ Isamu Noguchi

The good thing about being an artist, is it's a legitimate way of looking at things cross-eyed. ~ John Chamberlain

You know the question: 'How do you get to Carnegie Hall?' Answer: 'Practise?' Well, in my case, I got there by not practising. I didn't finish my music degree. And when I got into the pop world, I decided not to conform because I figured that the point of being an artist was that you shouldn't be like anyone else. ~ Rufus Wainwright

I was recognized as being an artist and a storyteller. If Hulk Hogan was the Elvis of wrestling, I was the Robert De Niro. ~ Bret Hart

The only thing that I am concerned with in life is being an artist .. I had to suppress for so many years in high school because I was made fun of but now I'm completely insulated in my box of insanity and I can do whatever I like. ~ Lady Gaga

From my standpoint, being an artist, I want to see what the new construction is between artist and audience. ~ David Bowie

Being an artist means, not reckoning and counting, but ripening like the tree which does not force its sap and stands confidence in the storms of spring without fear that after them may come no summer ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

There is no difference between being an artist and being in love. ~ Marty Rubin

I was at one point thinking about being an art historian, when I was in school. And not being an artist, but I decided I was going to be an artist but I'm really mad for art history and the masters mostly. ~ Robert Barry

I am interested in art as a means of living a life; not as a means of making a living. ~ Robert Henri

We should self-examine and talk about things like our own white privilege and these phony senses of being an artist. ~ Geoff Rickly

I feel like fashion and style is a big part of being an artist. ~ Chanel West Coast

When I'm up on stage, I'm thinking more about my fans and about myself as a singer and an artist. When I'm at home being a daddy, the last thing I'm thinking about is being an artist. It is two things that I never really put together. ~ Josh Turner

Being an artist is not only what you do, but how you live your life. ~ Ben Shahn

It's like whether you're in a huge movie or you've just recorded an incredible album you've got to do the next thing, and that's part of being an artist. ~ Brad Garrett

I think that the genes for being an artist and mentally ill aren't just related, they are the same gene, but try telling that to a bill collector. We ~ Neil Hilborn

As an artist, i live in fantasy and flirt with reality. I'm an emotional magician of sorts. I paint my feelings onto the abstract canvas of a waking dream. I suspend my concepts in the ether's of otherworldly realms. This is the way my existence has always been. I am untethered, a traveler between worlds. I sinuously slip in and out of the real and surreal, until, they are one and the same. I do not like being shackled or chained, to the physical plane. ~ Jaeda DeWalt

Being an artist is not just about what happens when you are in the studio. The way you live, the people you choose to love and the way you love them, the way you vote, the words that come out of your mouth ... will also become the raw material for the art you make. ~ Teresita Fernandez

Though I played classical piano since age 5 and sang in a cappella groups, being an artist didn't seem like something I was talented enough to do full time. So I kind of buried that dream. ~ Rachel Platten

Being an artist:
And this susceptibility of theirs is doubly unfortunate , I thought, returning again to my original enquiry into what state of mind is propitious for creative work, because the mind of an artist, in order to achieve to the prodigious effort of freeing whole and entire the work that is in him, must be incandescent, like Shakespeare's mind, I conjectured, looking at the book which lay open at Antony and Cleopatra. There must be no obstacle in it, no foreign matter unconsumed. ~ Virginia Woolf

From the outside looking in, i think my life would appear very isolated, occupying a huge empty space, with hollow-sounding, emotional echoes. But in reality, this solitary sanctuary i inhabit, allows my artistic nature to sing at the top of its lungs. My feelings have the space they need to breathe. And my art can gain the momentum, it requires, to bubble up to the surface of consciousness. For me, creativity is a chaotic and quiet hybrid, an entity that seeks a safe place to call home. ~ Jaeda DeWalt

I never stopped being a mother, and I never stopped being an artist. Which is probably why my kids are so creative. When I'm with my kids I'm creating but I'm still a mom. I don't wear two different hats. My kids have always been on the set with me. I was breastfeeding on set. None of my kids would take a bottle so they could not leave my side for a very long time. ~ Jada Pinkett Smith

Being an artist is a totally godlike thing to do - and I have a god complex. ~ Laurie Anderson

Henry glared at Anastasia. 'You quit planning on a rich husband, Anastasia. You're gonna get rich on your own. You and me, if we want husbands, fine. But we won't need them. Like our mothers. My mom could do just fine being a waitress, and your mom could do just fine being an artist. They got husbands 'cos they want them. That Bambie, now maybe she'll need a husband. But not you and me. Got it? ~ Lois Lowry

Indeed, being an artist is not just a job but an identity dependent on a broad range of extracurricular intelligences. ~ Sarah Thornton

The object of art is not to make salable pictures. It is to save yourself.
The fools who write articles about me think that one morning I suddenly decided to write and began to produce masterpieces.
There is no special trick about writing or painting either. I wrote constantly for 15 years before I produced anything with any solidity to it.
The thing of course, is to make yourself alive. Most people remain all of their lives in a stupor.
The point of being an artist is that you may live.
You won't arrive. It is an endless search. ~ Sherwood Anderson

There's just some dysfunctionalism with artists. There are good things and bad things about being an artist, and the good thing is, sometimes you get an inside line on what's really happening. You develop these strange antennae that clue you in to what's really going on. ~ David Bowie

I think being an artist, or just being creative, or imaginative, or aware, where I think everybody starts out, and by about the age of 10, that's been pretty effectively whipped out by education. ~ William Wiley

The perfect life, the perfect lie … is one which prevents you from doing that which you would ideally have done (painted, say, or written unpublishable poetry) but which, in fact, you have no wish to do. People need to feel that they have been thwarted by circumstances from pursuing the life which, had they led it, they would not have wanted; whereas the life they really want is precisely a compound of all those thwarting circumstances. It is a very elaborate, extremely simple procedure, arranging this web of self-deceit: contriving to convince yourself that you were prevented from doing what you wanted. Most people don't want what they want: people want to be prevented, restricted. The hamster not only loves his cage, he'd be lost without it. That's why children are so convenient: you have children because you're struggling to get by as an artist - which is actually what being an artist means - or failing to get on with your career. Then you can persuade yourself that your children prevented you from having this career that had never looked like working out. So it goes on: things are always forsaken in the name of an obligation to someone else, never as a failing, a falling short of yourself. ~ Geoff Dyer

My father had always identified himself as a writer to my mother when they met. When they met, he was writing this great novel, there was no doubt about it. Part of why she left him was this delusion of greatness and identifying it very directly with being an artist. ~ Nick Flynn

I never decided at all to be an artist; being an artist seems to have happened to me. ~ Anne Truitt

With the Ford Foundation grant all of a sudden instead of being an artist that had made a couple of short films, I became a filmmaker who dabbled in the arts. ~ Bruce Conner

Politics is politics; art is art. If you play a political role, you have to stop being an artist. ~ Youssou N'Dour

My father said being an artist is the shortest road to the poor house , claiming "real" work is something you don't like. I ignored him through oppositional behavior, later reasoning that only an idiot sets out to find the poor house , not to mention devote himself to something he does not love. Instead, I discovered an interesting back road to the unknown , and deliberately without a safety net. ~ Russell Chatham

The story that I wanna tell is pretty much about the way I grew up. Being bi-racial, growing up in a big city and being an artist. ~ Lenny Kravitz

Being an artist is in part an act of rupture. ~ Ira Sachs

Whether it's just the career path of doing independent music, being an artist, however you want to pigeon-hole it, it creates a certain type of character. ~ Doseone

I went to Princeton High School, when I was very serious about being an artist. I was in a theatre family but I didn't want to become an actor. ~ John Lithgow

I love making up visual works of art in language. I get to be an artist without actually being an artist in that sense. ~ Siri Hustvedt

I think that being an artist is more an approach to life than an approach to work. ~ Andrew Levitas

My father didn't think being an artist was a respectable or worthy goal for a man. ~ Richard Diebenkorn

As far as the balance between being a journalist, being an artist, being a storyteller - documentary filmmakers are all three of those things. The balance between them is affected by the film itself, the topic of the film. ~ Marshall Curry

Being single is like being an artist, not because creating a functional single life is an art form, but because it requires the same close attention to one's singular needs, as well as the will and focus to fulfill them. Just as the artist arranges her life around her creativity, sacrificing conventional comforts and even social acceptance, sleeping and eating according to her own rhythms, so that her talent thrives above all else, nurtured the way a child might be, so a single person has to think hard to decipher what makes her happiest and most fulfilled. ~ Kate Bolick

For me, the heyday was in 1959. It was before the Ferus Gallery moved across the street, in the days when Ed Kienholz and Walter Hopps ran it. At that time, art was taken very seriously in terms of being an artist, and not as a profession. ~ Billy Al Bengston

Being an artist for my well being and as a living, I live in a place of observance and interest in what I consider to be the most relevant questions. ~ Brandon Boyd

I often joke that I straddle psychosis and neurosis, and that being an artist keeps me in the middle, so I can work between the two. ~ Sam Taylor-Wood

Art is like a border of flowers along the course of civilization. ~ Lincoln Steffens

Mistress Creation keeps calling my name ... i long for her, and she, for me ... we will be reunited soon. In the interim, i bide my time dreaming of her, writing about her and stretching her across the vast landscape of my imagination. "Soon", i whisper to her, "Soon ~ Jaeda DeWalt

Oh, my dear fellow, if you want to be a gentleman you must give up being an artist. They've got nothing to do with one another. You hear of men painting pot-boilers to keep an aged mother – well, it shows they're excellent sons, but it's no excuse for bad work. They're only tradesmen. An artist would let his mother go to the workhouse. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

I always thought that it was every performer's dream. That's the epitome of being an artist, being able to express song, dance and acting in a live theatre setting and really connecting with an audience on that level. ~ Deborah Cox

Despite dreaming about making a living through his art, the real potential of becoming An Artist Nobody Likes was far, far scarier than remaining An Artist Nobody's Heard Of. At least he was comfortable with and used to being An Artist Nobody's Heard Of. ~ Mark Manson

The unique essence of being an artist is dying. Eveything looks the same. Now there's a formula. And it works. - But it takes away from the reason we do it. ~ Usher

Being a songwriter requires versatility while being an artist requires you to create a cohesive body of work. I truly enjoy both. ~ Wendy Starland

Modelling, it's being an artist as well. It's just being a silent artist. It takes a lot of self-control and a lot of discipline. ~ Jessica White

What's exciting about being an artist, still, and what I'm really finding is awesome is that you can do it until you drop. I don't care how many lines I have on my face - I'll keep doing it! ~ Nikki Sixx

In this there is no measuring with time, a year doesn't matter, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn't force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly silent and vast. I learn it every day of my life, learn it with pain I am grateful for: patience is everything! ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

I hadn't known anything else, other than being an artist, and I needed to be a person for a while, really get to know myself without that whole thing [of selling music] surrounding me. ~ Tove Styrke

Being an artist is a very long game. It is not a 10-year game. I hope I'll be around making art when I'm 80. ~ Anish Kapoor

There's this privileged position of being an artist where you can do things on a more experimental nature simply to see what happens. ~ Andrea Zittel

There's no map for being an artist. ~ Seth Godin

You really need to stop Googling yourself and start being an artist. ~ Alan Palomo

Artists are terminally dissatisfied. With life. With love. With their work. You like being tortured, don't you, little Luna? Sadness has a bittersweet aftertaste. Keeps us going." He lit up his joint. "Being an artist is a miserable job. You're pregnant with your work, only to give the baby away. An entire year of careful strokes of a brush, just to have someone else buy the painting. ~ L.J. Shen

The creative process is a love story that never ends. The ideas are like suitors competing for your attention. You may have relationships, with multiple ideas, at once. You may devote yourself completely to one idea, for a awhile, but the affairs will never end. There will always be more ideas to romance and more concepts to develop. And all for that wonderful moment when you get to gaze at the complete creation and hold perfection in your arms, for one blissful moment ... before your inner-critic starts tearing it to shreds. ~ Jaeda DeWalt

Once I started reinventing for myself what being an artist was - not going into a studio, but making things on my own terms in response to being out in the world - I started to really enjoy it ... I realized that everything else for me was hell. ~ Cornelia Parker

My parents constantly tried to talk me out of being an artist. They had gone through the whole journey with my sister and just wanted me to have a normal teenage life. ~ Solange Knowles

There's so many ways to be a voice and that's what I'm figuring out. Being an artist, being an actor, it's about telling stories that could heal, that could open up discussion that could make the community better. There are many (Latino) stories that need to be told and haven't been told right. If I could help be that voice then that's what I'm going to do, because this is a reality for me. ~ Richard Cabral

It's very interesting being an artist and a comedian, (because) you aim for jobs that will feed your ego, but when you get up to the precipice of them, you actually have to deliver. You actually have to understand that you're reaching a new level where there are way more eyes on you, way more expectations and way more pressure. ~ Chris Gethard

It is a good motive, fame and money, as it is tangible and measurable. Being an artist is neither measurable nor tangible and certainly not a way to become rich. ~ Dirk Benedict

Working as a model liberated me from ever having to hold a day job. I transitioned from doing that to working full-time as an artist. If you're 19 and living cheap, being an artist model can sustain you. ~ Molly Crabapple

But I found that being an artist and doing accurate work is very difficult. ~ Alan Bean

To be born with a unique instinct, will demand 'unique duties'. If you didn't think about being an artist before 7 years of age you probably don't have it and you will be able to paint what you want to paint. ~ David Luiz

I never stop being a mother and I never stop being an artist. You understand? Which is probably why my kids are so creative, because it's not separated. ~ Jada Pinkett Smith

I just really feel so grateful to Sundance because I've always been an artist and I've never been able to make a living at being an artist until Sundance. ~ Lynn Shelton

Being an artist doesn't mean that you're a good artist. That was the bargain I first made with myself: I'd say, I'm an artist, but I'm not really very good. ~ Paul Simon

I come from a visual background, and I grew up around a lot of hippies and artists. My mom and my brother and I moved around a lot. We basically moved every couple of years, and I went to a lot of different schools. But creativity, for us, was always a way of life. It was never a job. Being an artist was a passion and a way of life. ~ Jared Leto

One of the beauties of being an artist is that you can create a whole new world, with circumstances that are better in your invented world than they are in the real world. ~ Maurice Sendak

I feel it's my job to continue being a student of music if I want to continue being an artist and a producer of other artists. You have to keep filling your mind with other music. You have to be ahead of the curve. ~ Bruno Mars

This image of wanting to be an artist - that I would in some way become an artist -was very strong. I knew for a long, long time that that's what I would be. But nothing I ever did seemed to bring me any nearer to the condition of being an artist. And I didn't know how to do it. ~ Jasper Johns

Part of being an artist is that you are always concerned you don't have what it takes. It ... keeps us honest. ~ Lupita Nyong'o

Being an artist and having to be responsible for the art that you make is really quite challenging, and as you get older it becomes more and more difficult. ~ Tracey Emin

Do you call yourself an artist?" "Yes." "How absurd. You never sold a picture in your life." "Is that what being an artist means - selling? I thought it meant one who was always seeking without absolutely finding. I thought it means the contrary from 'I know it, I have found it.' When I say I am an artist, I only mean ~ Irving Stone