Iconic Artist Quotes

Leading the way forward at great cost to herself, her magnificent energy was so intense that it tumbles down still through many lives. ~ Theresa Sjoquist

My father was a psycho-analyst and I think that fact was very influential on my development as an artist. Trying to search beneath the surface of things for an unexpected sense of mystery. ~ Gregory Crewdson

My mom and I were super tight. I think she really wanted me to be an artist, you know? She used to like to tell people she wanted to be Beethoven's mother. That was her thing. She wanted to be the mother of this person. ~ Harry Connick, Jr.

I'm African American, I'm a lot of other things, a musician and an artist. But that woman part holds the most pain for me. And therefore, obviously, the most lessons. ~ India.Arie

The role of the artist I now understood as that of revealing through the world-surfaces the implicit forms of the soul, and the great agent to assist the artist was the myth. ~ Joseph Campbell

I am friends with Kathleen Hanna and Adam Horovitz, aka Ad-Rock from the Beastie Boys. I can't believe I am friends with them. I love Kathleen's music and I am in awe of her social activism and general awesomeness. I asked her to interview me for Interview magazine when I was just a sketch performer whom nobody knew. She said yes because she supports young women. This is the artist who pulled women to the front at her rock shows. She shows up and does the work and is the real deal. Now she is my friend. ~ Amy Poehler

I grew up going to museums. I was privileged to discover art and artists in a very personal way. ~ Thelma Golden

The work of art may have a moral effect, but to demand moral purpose from the artist is to make him ruin his work. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

You tend to find the best in yourself as an artist when you're challenged. ~ Jay Kristoff

USURY: Everybody's looking for the job in which you never have to pay anyone their pound of flesh. Self-employed nirvana. A lot of artists like to think of themselves as uncompromising; a lot of management consultants won't tell you what they do until they've sunk five pints. I don't think anybody should give themselves air just because they don't have to hand over a pound of flesh every day at 5pm, and I don't think anyone should beat themselves with broken glass because they do. If you're an artist, well, good for you. Thank your lucky stars every evening and dance in the garden with the fairies. But don't fool yourself that you occupy some kind of higher moral ground. You have to work for that. Writing a few lines, painting a pretty picture - that just won't do it. ~ Zadie Smith

I think as an actor, or any artist, you move with your moods and you express what's going on for you, and you answer to that voice within that's calling for particular things. ~ Guy Pearce

When you're an artist, all you're trying to do is self-express. ~ Kevin Smith

I have had this longstanding interest in going back to school to get a Ph.D. in art history. I was especially interested in exploring this idea of the ecstatic impulse in an artist. ~ Jandy Nelson

I had a very unusual contract. Most artists actually pay for their record dates and it comes out of their royalties. I paid for nothing. ~ Jo Stafford

I would have been a visual artist. When I was in high school, that was one of the things ... I had to make a decision what I was going to go to college for, and at the time, I also painted and sculpted. I got more attention for my performing, so I thought that was a better idea. ~ Josh Young

Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world. ~ Edward Hopper

To be an artist is not about fame; it's about art, which is this intangible thing that has got to have lots of integrity, whereas being famous doesn't really take any integrity. But I think you have to admit that you want to be famous, otherwise you can't be an artist. Art and fame together are like a desire to live forever. ~ Damien Hirst

I'm a good girl. I'm a nice girl. I'm a straight-A, strait-laced, good daughter, good career girl, and I never stole anybody's boyfriend and I never ran out on a girlfriend, and I put up with my parents' shit and brother's shit and I'm not a girl anyhow, I'm over forty fucking years old, and I'm good at my job and I'm great with kids and I held my mother's hand when she died,after four years of holding her hand while she was dying, and I speak to my father ever day on the telephone
every day, mind you, and what kind of weather do you have on your side of the river, because here it's pretty gray and a big muggy too? It was supposed to say "Great Artist" on my tombstone, but if I died right now it would say "Such a good teacher/daughter/friend" instead; and what I really want to shout, and want in big letters on that grave, too, is FUCK YOU ALL. ~ Claire Messud

God is an artist par excellence. He has painted the picturesque universe on the screen of His own immutable and glowing Spirit. So He is at once the painter and the painted. In the ultimate analysis, God and His lover, God and His devotee and servant, are He. The unmanifest--which is beyond all duality has become both. This secret few know. ~ Swami Ramdas

This is Unique !! Shopping malls working with one side of our needs, material satisfaction but here @ K11 there is a huge effort and initiative to bring emotional needs of human, our spiritual satisfaction.
K11 doing this with bringing Art and Nature in to the material shopping experience. It is not only satisfying physical needs and material but also our soul. Art itself is biggest teacher and Nature is biggest artist. ~ Baris Gencel

When a child who has been conceived in love is born to a man and a woman, the joy of that birth sings throughout the universe. The joy of writing or painting is much the same, and the insemination comes not from the artist himself but from his relationship with those he loves, with the whole world. All real art is, in its true sense, religious; it is a religious impulse; there is not such thing as a non-religious subject. ~ Madeleine L'Engle

[Slogan of her 'Trouble Bureau' for needy artists and musicians:] Happiness is a change of trouble. ~ Malvina Hoffman

Art is nothing tangible. We cannot call a painting 'art' as the words 'artifact' and 'artificial' imply. The thing made is a work of art made by art, but not itself art. The art remains in the artist and is the knowledge by which things are made. ~ Ananda Coomaraswamy

Presently, I really admire Rebecca Warren, the artist. She continues to keep creating wonderful sculpture. And I met her, and she is really cool. ~ Russell Tovey

I believe that every artist has his or her own vision of the world; our job as artists is to find and express that vision. The most important thing is to keep exploring, yourself and your materials. ~ Carole Katchen

The moment a woman comes home to herself, the moment she knows that she has become a person of influence, an artist of her life, a sculptor of her universe, a person with rights and responsibilities who is respected and recognized, the resurrection of the world begins. ~ Joan D. Chittister

Vulgarity is not as destructive to an artist as snobbery. ~ Pauline Kael

The artist looks for a subject. You know, a lot of new poets don't seem to have a subject. I don't totally understand that. ~ Gerald Stern

My idea of covers is that you should never cover a song and do it exactly like the artist because everyone's always going to compare it to the way the original artists did it, and they're just going to go, 'Oh I like the original better.' ~ Glenn Danzig

But where we see trash, God sees potential. The Mater Artist, with His tender touch, can rework our suffering into a pattern of good. ~ Tessa Emily Hall

If there were no hope of reward and no fear of punishment, would I work less ? I don't believe so. I work to honor the divine gift. Every artisan and artist enters into a covenant with the divine. Have you made yours? ~ Elif Shafak

In art vanity is equally fatal to sympathetic feeling, whether on the part of the artist or the public. ~ Okakura Kakuzo

By the artist's seizing any one object from nature, that object no longer is part of nature. One can go so far as to say that theartist creates the object in that very moment by emphasizing its significant, characteristic, and interesting aspects or, rather, by adding the higher values. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

I'm just following my own art, and I just think that the only thing I can do to be a great artist is do the best job I can in whatever movie I do. ~ Justin Chon