In this post, you will find great Artist Quotes from famous people, such as Jet Li, Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Alan Alda, Ida Rentoul Outhwaite, Rhys Ifans. You can learn and implement many lessons from these quotes.
I’d say, if you want to be an artist, start with your art; start with making great music and it will, hopefully, eventually cut through all of the nonsense that is out there.
I always knew what I wanted, and I always had a very clear vision for myself and my career as an artist.
I know I haven‘t always done things the right way. I’m just trying to reflect on how to make myself better, how to become a better man, a better father, a better person, a better artist.
A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.
Sorrowful and great is the artist’s destiny.
I started buying films a couple of years ago. The first film-maker I began to obsessively collect was Andy Milligan. He was a New York frustrated artist.
The modern artist… is working and expressing an inner world – in other words – expressing the energy, the motion, and other inner forces.
An artist is a man of action, whether he creates a personality, invents an expedient, or finds the issue of a complicated situation.
I suppose for me as an artist it wasn’t always just about expressing my work; I really wanted, more than anything else, to contribute in some way to the culture that I was living in. It just seemed like a challenge to move it a little bit towards the way I thought it might be interesting to go.
I’m an artist and an engineer, which is, increasingly, a more common kind of hybrid. But I still fall into this weird crack where people don’t seem to understand me.
The public needs art – and it is the responsibility of a ‘self-proclaimed artist’ to realize that the public needs art, and not to make bourgeois art for a few and ignore the masses.
I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.
It’s an incredible dilemma to be an artist of color and to always be in denial about that, saying, ‘I’m a choreographer first and then I’m black,’ when in fact, that’s not the case. I’m black first and then I’m also a choreographer.
So it’s hard to be an artist and be true to the reality of the world you want to create and also make it entertaining and successful financially.
The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.
I think it’s very dangerous as an artist to be comfortable.
The artist in me cries out for design.
I’m a real big Marilyn Manson fan. I get a lot of my styles from him. Not even musically – living-wise, too. Marilyn Manson definitely shows me you shouldn’t care what nobody say. I watched a bunch of his interviews, and he’s not just an artist; he’s one of the most intelligent people I ever saw in my life.
I just don’t want to live in the past. I’m really disappointed by so many people of my generation who – in order to promote their new work, they have to constantly lean on their past. I don’t want to be that type of artist… I see a lot of people out here doing really marginal music.
My desire to be an artist really came out of being broke and unemployed and incapable of holding a job down. That’s what it was driven by for sure.
The people, the culture… there’s so much magic in Colombia, so I feel like being a kid, being able to have that, being able to also call Colombia my home, it was such an important part of my introduction as an artist, too, because it’s such a big part of my life as a human being.
An artist, under pain of oblivion, must have confidence in himself, and listen only to his real master: Nature.
Every artist writes his own autobiography.
My kids, I love it when they tell me, ‘Abba, I want to be an artist.’ And I say, that is awesome… I just want you to be happy and to follow your heart.
I want to showcase my talent, I’m not just a grime MC, I’m an artist.
The true artist doesn’t substitute immorality for morality. On the contrary, he always substitutes a finer morality for a grosser one.
I don’t consider myself a musician. I’m an artist.
At around 16, I became obsessed with James Joyces A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man. I was absorbed by the sense of someone trying to break out of an institution but then became interested in Joyces experimental way of writing.
I believe versatility is key for any artist.
When I see Kate Moss out and about, I think she looks more beautiful than when her hairdresser and make-up artist try and make her look like something else. And I remember when Madonna first asked Versace to book me to shoot a campaign with her, she came to see me wearing hardly any make-up, and she looked incredible.
What distinguishes a great artist from a weak one is first their sensibility and tenderness; second, their imagination, and third, their industry.
I just want to give the people 100% of myself as an artist.
The difference between a bad artist and a good one is: the bad artist seems to copy a great deal; the good one really does.
An artist is only an exemplary person if you can see in his works how life goes.
Inside you there’s an artist you don’t know about. He’s not interested in how things look different in moonlight.
I would say runway is easier because your job is to look good or play a character that is just going somewhere. It’s rather physical, whereas acting is terrifying because you’re dealing with your subconscious, and those can be murky waters. But I definitely can say that I enjoy acting more as an artist.
I am a YouTube artist.
An artist’s creative energy is ephemeral as a flower. It blooms and soon dies. No artist is great forever. Personally, I think I reached my peak in 2004 when I shot ‘Samaria’ and ‘3-Iron’.
One day I had an instinct to put on a kaftan and go out and sing. People liked it out of the blue. An artist should be instinctive.
I’m just a manga artist, so I can’t stand being scrutinized.
There ought to be an artistic depot where the artist need only hand in his artwork in order to receive what he asks for. As things are, one must be half a business man, and how can one understand – good heavens! – that’s what I really call troublesome.
No one can make the album they made 10 years ago with a straight face. There are two reasons: one is you change as a person. To be a true artist, I have to be true to who I am now and write that way. And the second thing is these are different times.
I love natural beauty, and I think it’s your best look, but I think makeup as an artist is so transformative.
I think when your confidence is still growing as a young artist, your capacity for generosity and partnership can be hindered, probably in large part due to self-involvement.
I fought doing dance music as a solo artist for a long time. I always thought there was a ceiling with it.
There have been points in my life as an artist where I have wanted to capture people’s attention, probably to compensate for times when I felt invisible.
Everyone liked me when I went up on the stage at a talent search in elementary school, and that’s when I decided to become a music artist.
Fame was never something I was seeking in my artistic journey. It’s to be used as a tool for an artist to break open doors and keep creating. That’s how I enjoyed fame in ’74; it was not just for the emptiness of being famous.
The expectation on me as a solo artist is very different to the audience‘s expectation of a Pink Floyd show.
To restrict the artist is a crime. It is to murder germinating life.
A great artist is always before his time or behind it.
Seeing is more than a physiological phenomenon… We see not only with our eyes but with all that we are and all that our culture is. The artist is a professional see-er.
If I could collaborate with any artist, I would want it to be like Marvin Gaye. Someone like who they wouldn’t expect me to do a feature with, like, very iconic.
I want to go and see things as a fan again. I am a fan, but I can’t remember what it feels like to be a fan anymore. Because I’ve become an artist. I’ve become the artist.
The worst thing that being an artist could do to you would be that it would make you slightly unhappy constantly.
The artist must be in his work as God is in creation, invisible and all-powerful; one must sense him everywhere but never see him.
I think business has to be stupider. I want to do really straightforward, stupid business – just talk to me like a 4-year-old. And I refuse to negotiate. I do not negotiate. I can collaborate. But I’m an artist, so as soon as you negotiate, you’re being compromised.
An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one.
I decided that I wanted to be an artist in middle school, and although my mom wasn’t fully on board with me becoming a trainee, she really supported me throughout the years and is very proud of me now.
The house has to please everyone, contrary to the work of art which does not. The work is a private matter for the artist. The house is not.
Sometimes it’s really weird being an artist, and I deal with that best by being myself.
Scratch an artist and you surprise a child.
I am very much my own person and my own artist.
I am not a black artist, I am an artist.
One of the greatest things about being an artist is, as you get older, if you keep working hard in relationship to what you want the world to be and how you want it to become, there is a history of interesting growth that resonates with different moments in your life.
When you’re an artist, you’re working, literally, for the sole purpose of art, and when people discredit you, it’s probably the most disrespectful thing you can do.
I came to feel an artist might use anything – a dot, a line, the most conventional or unconventional symbol – t say what he wanted to say.
Whenever I fill out the job description I put ‘songwriter‘, never ‘singer’ or ‘artist.’ Singers come and go.
When you’re, like, 190 pounds, dark-skinned, and a new artist that no one really cares about, people don’t really take the time to make you look beautiful.
The first prerogative of an artist in any medium is to make a fool of himself.
No one is an artist unless he carries his picture in his head before painting it, and is sure of his method and composition.
Why do you think my name is Artist? I’m an artist.
As an artist, the more experience, the better the creation. I’m a very positive person.
My story as an artist has been about trial and error. It’s been about artist development, character building, struggle, happiness and failure, family, and music.
In every work of art the subject is primordial, whether the artist knows it or not. The measure of the formal qualities is only a sign of the measure of the artist’s obsession with his subject; the form is always in proportion to the obsession.
I just respect Kanye as an artist.
It’s a curse. I ask God to take this away from me all the time. I do not like being an artist.
I try not to see myself as anything, as that would be embarrassing. But if I had to label myself, I’d probably say I was an artist due to the fact that I enjoy working within the arts on different platforms, of which comedy is just one.
I hope what I do has an art to it, and as an artist you have to try new things and keep yourself entertained.
The great artist is a slave to his ideals.
There’s this weird game called ‘Blueberry Garden.’ For that game an artist recorded some piano music, but evidently he only had a really terrible microphone on top of the piano, and I really liked it and wanted to experiment with that. So, I made piano recording and really mangled it, and kept experimenting with the technique.
The greatest compliment I ever got was when people called me an artist, and I understand that solo aspect of being an artist, when you’re in there by yourself, trying to do something great, and people who don’t even know you can come up and just dump on you.
I think for an artist it’s really important to have experiences, and I’ve had a lot of those. It’s definitely inspired my lyrics and my style, even down to what I wear.
My mother was a housewife but she was also an artist. My father was an electrical engineer.
Pyrex Vision’s first season was, for me, an expression of myself as an artist first, designer second.
An artist’s early work is inevitably made up of a mixture of tendencies and interests, some of which are compatible and some of which are in conflict.
A true artist is expected to be all that is noble-minded, and this is not altogether a mistake; on the other hand, however, in what a mean way are critics allowed to pounce upon us.
I follow politics in a big way, and always have since I was a kid. I’ve got opinions, but they’re opinions on both sides – not just anti-Republican, which is a real popular thing for a rap artist to do. If you dis Republicans, nobody will get mad. I think the two-party system sucks. It’s absolutely ignorant.
That’s how a lot of Tame Impala songs start out – as ideas for songs I could potentially give to someone else. I think of them with a different persona in mind; it’s just a subconscious way of not being bound by what you think you are as an artist.
An artist must never be a prisoner. Prisoner? An artist should never be a prisoner of himself, prisoner of style, prisoner of reputation, prisoner of success, etc.
It’s a challenging task for every artist to come up with new ideas. Your last video would have made a benchmark, so the next one should ideally be better than your previous work, so there’s always a competition with myself to be better.
No, as an artist, you have to be free to explore all the corners of your heart. There are no boundaries.
If they’re not temperamental, I don’t want them. It’s in the nature of a great artist to be that way.
There should be a law that no ordinary newspaper should be allowed to write about art. The harm they do by their foolish and random writing it would be impossible to overestimate – not to the artist, but to the public, blinding them to all but harming the artist not at all.
Without going outside his race, and even among the better classes with their ‘white’ culture and conscious American manners, but still Negro enough to be different, there is sufficient matter to furnish a black artist with a lifetime of creative work.
Bullfighting is the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the performance is left to the fighter‘s honor.
My personal life, my musical life, my life as an artist – almost everything has pointed all these little arrows that make up which way I go as a person and what I feel comfortable as my identity.
When you’re a writer, your song has to resonate with the person you’re writing for in order for them to want to sing it. But if you’re an artist, you can sing whatever you want.
Pain is such an important thing in life. I think that as an artist you have to experience suffering.
I’ve been a signed artist, but it’s only been a full year-and-a-half. I’m still kind of new to money and this kind of lifestyle, so me being in a messed up predicament wasn’t too long ago.
If the audience knew what they wanted then they wouldn’t be the audience, they would be the artist.
For me, the only value a celebrity has, or any artist or actor or anything, is the things that they make, you know?
The majority of people, especially young people, know Dr. Dre because of Beats by Dre, not necessarily from him being a rap artist.
I know as a consumer I want a story. I want a defining – I don’t want just an album full of singles. I want to get to know the artist beyond what everyone else can hear on the radio.
An artist must create. If she doesn’t, she will become a menace to society.
In my own case, I’m an artist, and I’m really interested in expanding the vocabulary of human action, and basically empowering people through interactivity. I want people to discover themselves as actors, as creative actors, by having interactive experiences.
I think the biggest way of connecting with people is through your music and kind of saying what you want to say as an artist. And hopefully, you’re making something that someone’s going to be like, ‘This is my favorite song.’ That’s always your goal, I think, anybody in any genre.
For millions of women and men around the world, the playwright Eve Ensler is a beloved figure. She represents the epitome of the politically engaged artist, someone who uses her creative brilliance to illuminate injustice and give voice to the voiceless.
Bruce Lee only played himself. Chuck Norris is a martial artist that does acting. I want to be an actor that does martial arts.
I am no longer afraid of becoming lost, because the journey back always reveals something new, and that is ultimately good for the artist.
Be your own artist, and always be confident in what you’re doing. If you’re not going to be confident, you might as well not be doing it.
Well, from an acting point of view, I bear no relation, I don’t look like Alfred Kinsey at all, but I thought somewhere in my artist’s soul, my actor’s soul, I could capture something of the spirit of the man.
To be an artist is not a matter of making paintings or objects at all. What we are really dealing with is our state of consciousness and the shape of our perceptions.
Doubtless there are things in nature which have not yet been seen. If an artist discovers them, he opens the way for his successors.
Being a songwriter is really the base of being an artist, for me.
I want to be an artist that everyone can relate to, that’s young, happy and fun.
I’m 47 years old. I couldn’t compete with Beyonce. I’m not competing with anyone. I’ve already established myself as an artist. I’ve been in this business for 30 years. There’s no reason for me to compete with anyone.
I wanted to become a cartoon artist, a portrait artist, and an illustrator. This was my first idea.
Record contracts are just like – I’m gonna say the word – slavery. I would tell any young artist… don’t sign.
As an artist, you want to make good stories and create good art; as a businessman, you want to make money and make sure the investors are happy. The two will always clash, unfortunately.
I just tried to be an artist in my own metier.
An artist’s job is simply to take the mirror in front of your face and hold it there. It’s not to give you any answers. It is simply to take that mirror and point it at you.
I just consider myself an artist. I don’t really rap. I don’t really sing. I just do what I feel is good, and people like it.
Every man, and for stronger reasons, every artist, wants to be recognized. So do I.
In French, there is an old expression, la patte, meaning the artist’s touch, his personal style, his ‘paw’. I wanted to get away from la patte and from all that retinal painting.
I would explain myself as a singer, an artist… and most importantly I’m a part of Twice!
A great chef is an artist that I truly respect.
My dream job growing up was always to be an artist. It wasn’t even that I would be a rapper or singer; I just knew I would be a public figure.
What I’ve discovered is that in art, as in music, there’s a lot of truth-and then there’s a lie. The artist is essentially creating his work to make this lie a truth, but he slides it in amongst all the others. The tiny little lie is the moment I live for, my moment. It’s the moment that the audience falls in love.
When I first came in, family life wasn’t at the forefront of your career or who you were as an artist. You was even supposed to be projected as a single man for the public.
Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is.
Sometime during the mid-50s I said, ‘I am an artist.’ Before that, for many years, I had said, ‘I’m going to be an artist.’ Then I went through a change of mind and a change of heart. What made ‘going to be an artist’ into ‘being an artist’, was, in part, a spiritual change.
Ariana Grande is a billionaire before she’s been an artist. You have to work to be able to appreciate what you have… what work did she ever have to do in her life?
Anytime an artist puts your name in a song, it’s unbelievable. It never gets old.
As an artist I’d choose the thing that’s beautiful more than the one that’s true.
The importance of art is in the process of doing it, in the learning experience where the artist interacts with whatever is being made.
At art college, I started to do music and then painting and drawing – and that would have been my ideal life, to be an artist and be paid for it, to be able to create stuff. I realized it was difficult, but I don’t know if I had the application for it.
I became paralyzed as an artist with writer’s block.
I think a businessman can be an artist just as much as a writer or a sculptor, so I’m real proud of what the company has become.
If the newspapers cut me up so much that I shall not venture before the world again, I have resolved to become a house painter; that would be as easy as anything else, and I should, at any rate, still be an artist!
Basically, an artist should be a mirror, or a reflection of society or his or her environment. What you see is what you can articulate.
Being an artist doesn’t just mean you have a song. That doesn’t make you an artist. The word ‘artist’ means so many different things, and I feel like to be a real one, you really have to do it all. The people that I think of as artists – Tyler the Creator, Childish Gambino, Kanye West – are doing the most.
Gucci Mane is my favorite artist.
I don’t think it pays to just be an artist, particularly for kids of color – there will be fewer roles.
As I say, I as an abstract artist was active politically.
You’re only a new artist one time, and I can just say I’m so blessed. I feel so inspired to do other things, to be so much more.
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.
Few people know that I am also an artist; I truly enjoy sketching and drawing.
I think that Curt Swan, when he did Superman for the longest time, became the definitive Superman artist, and everybody got it. That made him very, very special in the annals of comic books.
The hardest thing for – not only an artist but for anybody to do is look themselves in the mirror and acknowledge, you know, their own flaws and fears and imperfections and put them out there in the open for people to relate to it.
My father, Dennis Popham, was a very handsome, talented artist, and as my mother always reminds me, ‘someone who had wonderful style.’ He was half Samoan-German, half New Zealander, and their first date was to a Fleetwood Mac concert, which I love the thought of.
When a great artist gets my attention, I pursue it. If I don’t, someone else will, you know what I’m saying?
I am not a dancehall artist, and I am not a reggae artist.
Any man who does not have his inner world to translate is not an artist.
If you’re a new artist, practice your art and share it. Set up shop somewhere, whether it’s a street corner or a coffee shop. I got my start in a coffee shop that didn’t even have live music. I wanted to play in coffee shops that did have live music, but I didn’t have an audience.
Good taste is the first refuge of the non-creative. It is the last-ditch stand of the artist.
If the paying public demands naturalistic art, then an artist can use his skills to produce such pictures – but these are to be clearly distinguished from the artist’s own art.
I became aesthetically obsessed with language. And ‘literary artist’ – poet and novelist – is a calling. You are called to it the way preachers are called to preaching the gospel.
Singing background has always been such a precious thing. I’m always going to be excited to sing behind an artist and learn from them.
To be an artist, you don’t have to compose music or paint or be in the movies or write books. It’s just a way of living. It has to do with paying attention, remembering, filtering what you see and answering back, participating in life.
I don’t write for a particular audience. I work as an artist, and I think the audience of one, which is the self, and I have to satisfy myself as an artist. So I always say that I write for the same people that Picasso painted for. I think he painted for himself.
Sometimes I think it’s the responsibility of the artist to reveal a little more of themselves.
I do have my own personal convictions and values, and I live by those. But as an artist, as a portrait photographer, my job is to tell the truth and to capture someone’s spirit on a certain day. And it’s never the whole truth; it’s the truth I experience in a very intense and intimate fashion.
I’m not religious, but by nature I am spiritual. I’m an artist, and creativity seems to go hand in hand with spirituality. But I have a knee-jerk reaction against organized religions. Actually, I have knee-jerk reactions against anything that’s organized.
The biggest challenge, I think for any new artist, is patience.
To the artist there is never anything ugly in nature.
Any artist picks and chooses what they want to paint or write about or say. Photographers are the same.
Comedy is the one absolutely self-aware art form. Actually, hip-hop’s another one, I suppose. Because in your songs you’re talking about how good a hip-hop artist you are. It’s like a painter painting a panting of himself painting a painting.
As an artist who performs on the stage, I try to express my feelings and convey my inner thoughts through the looks I give the audience. So, I tend to focus on making sure that my makeup highlights my eyes properly.
I think older people can appreciate my music because I really show my heart when I sing, and it’s not corny. I think I can grow as an artist, and my fans will grow with me.
I don’t mean that if you’re a Christian, walking close to God, you will immediately gain celebrity. you may fail as an artist, because you may not have what the public want at that time, and you have to be prepared for that.
One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.
The thing about covers that’s relatively important to remember is that it doesn’t matter how good an artist you are: if you don’t have good ideas, the covers don’t stand out.
Of course, every artist has ‘minor works’ that they do, but I don’t think I have any ‘minor disciplines.’ Each discipline I approach as a major undertaking that I put my whole self into.
I’ve been in an artist position. I’ve been in a management position.
The history of modern art is also the history of the progressive loss of art’s audience. Art has increasingly become the concern of the artist and the bafflement of the public.
I went to film school at UT Austin. I learned a lot, and that school’s good for puking up all your bad movies early and quick. But ultimately, no one can teach you to be an artist.
The artist is the medium between his fantasies and the rest of the world.
I pay attention to how every makeup artist does everything.
I see myself as an artist who happens to do cartoons.
To be a good artist, you have to serve the work of art and allow it to be what it is supposed to be.
I had rather be called a journalist than an artist.
I think with anything where you delve into the back story of an artist, it kind of explains their work more intimately.
The world doesn’t need an artist who shows reality as it is.
What does the artist do? He draws connections. He ties the invisible threads between things. He dives into history, be it the history of mankind, the geological history of the Earth or the beginning and end of the manifest cosmos.
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.
I’ve had to accept that – that everyone cannot love me. Because when there’s love, there’s hate. When there’s light, there’s dark. But it was really hard to accept as an artist that there’s a lot of people that hate me, but on the other side, there are many more people who love me. I think everyone goes through that.
In our life there is a single color, as on an artist’s palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love.
Every day I’m getting shaped and molded. Keepin’ on, being a better artist, and improving on this, improving on that. The more I’m in it, the more I’m practicing and the more I’m advancing.
Data is what distinguishes the dilettante from the artist.
A great artist transforms our world, removes scales from our eyes, plugs from our ears, gloves from our fingertips, teaches us to perceive reality differently.
My whole premise has been, right from the beginning, that it would take me a lifetime to learn to explain myself as an artist. As you grow older, you learn what to do and what to leave out. You kind of simplify your work and get the same thing done with fewer strokes. It’s pretty interesting to me.
Kendrick Lamar is a phenomenal artist whose work has served as a catalyst to raise a new level of consciousness for this generation. His message challenges the status quo and motivates listeners to rethink our society’s institutions.
The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid; the state of being alone.
Some people have been kind enough to call me a fine artist. I’ve always called myself an illustrator. I’m not sure what the difference is. All I know is that whatever type of work I do, I try to give it my very best. Art has been my life.
Whether you are sixteen or over sixty, remember, understatement is the rule of a fine makeup artist.
I don’t think of myself as an artist. I’m just a guy who can write.
What is it they want from the man that they didn’t get from the work? What do they expect? What is there left when he’s done with his work, what’s any artist but the dregs of his work, the human shambles that follows it around?
I’m an artist. Artists don’t need permission to work. Regardless of whether I’m acting or not, I write. I write when I’m tired in fact, because I believe your most pure thoughts surface.
It is very good advice to believe only what an artist does, rather than what he says about his work.
Asking an artist to talk about his work is like asking a plant to discuss horticulture.
I would think, as an artist, it’s inescapable that you’ll be affected by the world around you.
I don’t care who’s playing. Even if it’s my favorite artist, I’m probably not gonna go and see him.
It’s an artist’s duty to reflect the times in which we live.
A movie star is not an artist, he is an art object.
I commissioned this artist to make these silver tomahawks by hand. Larry Sellers, who plays Cloud Dancing on the show, blessed and cleansed them and all.
If only the people around you know you’re an artist, then you’re doing something wrong.
The most difficult thing in the world is to reveal yourself, to express what you have to. As an artist, I feel that we must try many things – but above all we must dare to fail. You must be willing to risk everything to really express it all.
I got to meet Kanye West because we were shopping my artist deal, and I was interested in his label. When I met him, I played him all the records I had. He introduced me to Rihanna, and she recorded and cut some of those records.
My philosophy is that I’m an artist. I perform an art not with a paint brush or a camera. I perform with bodily movement. Instead of exhibiting my art in a museum or a book or on canvas, I exhibit my art in front of the multitudes.
Some musicians feel they have to provide what their audiences expect. They lose the distinction between an artist and an entertainer. I am not an entertainer.
When a young artist is ready, one has to bring him into the limelight.
For me, if I saw my favorite artist in the store, I would probably just tell them three words and walk away.
I always say I’m just eternally grateful for this role because Raven Reyes defies all stereotypes. It’s revolutionary for a character on television, and it’s also extremely creatively liberating as an artist.
Now almost every artist outside of New York is connected with some school or some museum school, and even in New York the majority are. That’s an interesting fact when you take the idea of making money, making a living selling paintings. Only a dozen or two painters do that.
If you’re not an optimist, forget being an artist.
An artist never really finishes his work, he merely abandons it.
Every artist was first an amateur.
To be a truly conscientious artist, you have to look at what’s not working and challenge it. You riff on things.
I am very conscious of who I am as an artist and as an inspirational person.
Believing in yourself and what you do is so important. It took me a long time to find that confidence. If you’re an artist and you’re taking risks, then you’re doing something right if some people don’t get it.
The worst frame of mind to be in is what the fans like or what the fans want, because then you lose the authenticity of who you are as an artist and who you are as a person.
My dad is an English teacher, and my mom is a textiles artist. My parents made my sisters and me feel that if we wanted to pursue something creative, it could be done. They’ve always been supportive of everything from the beginning.
Nothing, indeed, is more dangerous to the young artist than any conception of ideal beauty: he is constantly led by it either into weak prettiness or lifeless abstraction: whereas to touch the ideal at all, you must not strip it of vitality.
The reason I did fashion was it was the only way to get paid to do anything creative. You couldn’t support yourself as an ‘artist’ – I hate that word. The only way you could be ‘arty’ was as a fashion photographer, because it still had a certain amount of integrity involved.
I was forced to be an artist and a CEO from the beginning, so I was forced to be like a businessman because when I was trying to get a record deal, it was so hard to get a record deal on my own that it was either give up or create my own company.
I don’t in any way disparage any time I’ve had in the trenches because it really has made me the artist I am today.
I’m not an artist. I set the camera up and tell my story.
I believe Kendrick Lamar is not only an artist but an influencer of an entire generation. He represents Compton with great pride, and I am honored to present him with the Key to the City, which symbolizes our deep appreciation for his philanthropic work and commitment to our community.
As a solo artist, my desire is to express myself through my music.
Writing changed my life. It has an existential dimension, and that’s the same for every writer. Every artist has a moment of awakening, of happening upon an idea that grabs hold of you, regardless of whether you are a painter or a writer.
When I’m working on something, if I went to an exhibition of an artist I respect, then I usually come home quite depressed and look at what I’m doing and throw it all away and start again.
An artist is somebody who enters into competition with God.
Although I started off as a child artist, I left acting in between, as I felt that I was missing the fun of school days. But a little later, I became keen on acting again and started going for auditions.
I think ‘The Color of Money’ was very instrumental in opening up other opportunities. People started to recognize me as an artist after that film. And then, after I did ‘Bird,’ it was more solidified.
I’ve been around long enough for people to know who I am and what my contributions are. They know me as more than just an artist. I think they know me as a woman as well.
Every artist preserves deep within him a single source from which, throughout his lifetime, he draws what he is, and what he says. When the source dries up, the work withers and crumbles.
I think that people have a very strict perception of what a pop artist is.
Freedom of speech is, to all Americans, as oxygen is to the human condition. It is a right that has been irreversibly programmed into our hard drive. We are free to speak our minds. An artist’s right to express him or herself as best suits their art, is the artist’s prerogative and it is guaranteed.
A work of art is a world in itself reflecting senses and emotions of the artist’s world.
As an artist, I never want to be a moment. I want to be a legacy, and I want my music to touch people for years to come.
A lot of my building blocks – who I am kind of as an artist – all came from being in L.A.
I have a lot of tattoos. My first tattoo I had when I was a teenager was just a little heart. I am very friendly with a great artist, Scott Campbell, and I started going to him to get tattoos. I’m very spontaneous about what I get.
Being beautiful can be a curse, especially if you want to be an artist and create.
If I’m the biggest artist in the world, cool, but I want to just be me.
The artist finds, that the more he can confine his attention to a particular part of any work, his productions are the more perfect, and grow under his hands in the greater quantities.
I’m definitely a West Coast artist, so much so that I’m gonna get ‘Thug Life’ tatted on my stomach one day.
You must not get too possessive, especially in our profession, where you know things aren’t going to be easy. You can either drive the artist crazy, or you can help him or her grow.
If you write great songs with meaning and emotion, they will last for ever because songs are the key to everything. Songs will outlast the artist and they will go on for ever if they are good.
I always wanted to be an artist, but I didn’t really know how someone could make a life out it.
An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose.
I’m an artist who happens to be in drag. And I think that’s why my drag is a little different.
I’m a martial artist. I’ve boxed all my life. I work out. I studied Hwarangdo, which is a Korean style.
I’m an artist, I’m not an activist.
I am an artist who works with Lego.
Being an artist is in part an act of rupture.
As an artist, I often wonder what my purpose is or why I do what I do.
Kanye West is a brilliant poet and artist. He and I work in a very similar way. We feel the vibration, the power of something, and it inspires us to create, whether it is music or design. It is the same process. Working with Kanye is a joy and great privilege. In 2012, we did collaboration together.
Hands are the tool of the painter, the artist.
I am a writer. I suppose I think that the highest gift that man has is art, and I am audacious enough to think of myself as an artist – that there is both joy and beauty and illumination and communion between people to be achieved through the dissection of personality.
I just work with people that I love and respect, that inspire me to be a better person, a better artist.
For us Africans, literature must serve a purpose: to expose, embarrass, and fight corruption and authoritarianism. It is understandable why the African artist is utilitarian.
It’s so different now coming out as a new artist today than it was when I came out almost ten years ago. Now, it’s all about singles, it’s really quick, it’s online. I came out when people sold records and they still do today but – I don’t know what the key is.
There is a difference between a fighter and a martial artist. A fighter is training for a purpose: He has a fight. I’m a martial artist. I don’t train for a fight. I train for myself. I’m training all the time. My goal is perfection. But I will never reach perfection.
That terrible mood of depression of whether it’s any good or not is what is known as The Artist’s Reward.
Half your battle is won when the writing is good, and then you as an artist bring your personality into it.
I was in Barcelona working with Shakira, and it was an amazing experience. She’s a great artist, and I learned a lot while working with her.
The popular mythology of creative genius depends on beloved stereotypes of the artist in youth and old age: the misunderstood upstart who forces us to see the world afresh; and the revered sage who shows us depths of insight attainable only through a lifetime of hard-won experience.
Any artist, the work you do, if it’s a painting or if it’s a performance, you hope it translates to a common denominator with the people that they see something in their own life in there. Or they see something in somebody else’s life. That’s what’s fun about sharing art.
My favorite singer is Canton Jones, a gospel hip-hop artist – when I’m on the bus going to a game, I listen to him in my own little world, singing and dancing; he gets me ready to play every time.
I never look for music by genre. I look for an artist who puts a dependable trademark on things. Like Elvis Costello – he’s a great songwriter who presents his songs in a number of contexts. I feel the same about my own music.
I can draw really well. And I like to paint. I’m a bit of an artist.
I don’t mind putting my heart out there for the audience, and for the country music fans… to be vulnerable with them… that’s my job as an artist.
I’m a con artist in that I’m an actor. I make people believe something is real when they know perfectly well it isn’t.
I always wanted to be a makeup artist. When I don’t get to have my stylist, I do my own makeup!
There might be the odd person in my family who was an artist down the line, but no one in my immediate family is an actor of any kind.
I want to be an artist, not… a celluloid aphrodisiac.
Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.
I just wanted to be an artist. I didn’t care how or what; I just wanted to express my artistic integrity, and I wanted the world to have a vision of what I was seeing in my mind.
The artist’s job is to be a witness to his time in history.
I shy away from the word ‘creation.’ In the ordinary, social meaning of the word – well, it’s very nice, but fundamentally, I don’t believe in the creative function of the artist. He’s a man like any other.
I don’t often go to curator or artist walk-throughs of exhibitions. For a critic, it feels like cheating. I want to see shows with my own eyes, making my own mistakes, viewing exhibitions the way most of their audience sees them.
I don’t have a beef with any female artist.
I have such an eclectic taste in music. Come to a backyard BBQ at my house, and I will run the gamut from Skynyrd to Sinatra to ’90s grunge, rap, R&B, and classic rock. I have issues. If I had to pick one, I love this country artist named Craig Morgan. His music and his songs are so relatable and tell such vivid stories.
An artist’s duty is rather to stay open-minded and in a state where he can receive information and inspiration. You always have to be ready for that little artistic Epiphany.
When I was a little kid I wanted to be an artist or a painter. But once I got into boxing, all I wanted was to box.
I’m just an artist and I’m doin’ what I like to do.
I think it’s important as an artist to never forget where you’re from.
Just doing a project because it’s an opportunity won’t create meaning. As an artist, I need something to communicate.
I’m just being myself. To me, that people are interested in Jenni, not necessarily the artist, but the woman… it amazes me still.
I always longed to have someone who would just be there for me. Of course I have Tom. I’m extremely happy that we’re brothers. I wouldn’t be able to work as a solo artist.
To give a body and a perfect form to one’s thought, this – and only this – is to be an artist.
Over the years, I was never really driven to become a solo artist, but I was curious to find out who I was as an individual creative person. It’s taken some time, but now I feel I’ve truly paid my dues. I guess I’m at a point now where I’m more comfortable in my own skin.
My father wanted me to be a dentist like him, or any doctor, really. There was this attitude of, ‘The civil rights movement was not about you being an artist.’
Even if the world outside is destroying itself and fragmented and paranoid and fearful, the job of the artist is to embrace and hold people and say, ‘It’s OK, be safe here.’
A true architect is not an artist but an optimistic realist. They take a diverse number of stakeholders, extract needs, concerns, and dreams, then create a beautiful yet tangible solution that is loved by the users and the community at large. We create vessels in which life happens.
I don’t want to be just that transgender performer or that transgender musical artist. I want to create songs and art and have those be judged on their merit alone.
The most seductive thing about art is the personality of the artist himself.
The only duty an artist has is in the quality of the art. There is no moral obligation to denounce. An artist confronted with a tremendous injustice sometimes feels inclined to say something. Denouncing the situation is the artist’s choice.
The body, in ‘La Belle Noiseuse,’ was the source of the artist’s creativity.
It is hard to separate the art from the artist.
Believe it or not, most people think of me as a recording artist, but actually the way I think of myself and the way I earn my living is as a performing artist.
The thing about being an artist today is you get to develop right in front of people’s eyes before you even put out an album.
People see my photos and think I labor over my image and I’m this cool, brooding artist. But I’m just having fun with it.
When I see a new artist I give myself a lot of time to reflect and decide whether it’s art or not.
I think the key is basically just your determination. As far an artist is concerned, it’s just about your drive and your dream.
I didn’t know how to play guitar until I was 21, but from the moment I was good enough on guitar to even put one song together, I kind of billed myself as an artist.
The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work.
What I really think about Banksy is I think he’s a genius; he’s a great artist, and I like his stuff. But he’s got to accept it if, from time to time, someone will need to paint over his work.
As an artist you have to have a certain amount of arrogance.
Art is the collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.
Calling a young artist ‘great’ these days can give one the heebie-jeebies: The word has been denatured in the past decade.
As a child I prayed that my calling be revealed – but not with expectation and not with a destination. I became an artist because I didn’t know what to do and I thought it was really fun to make things.
I think it’s important to earn your fan base and not just try to immediately advance to the top. If you ride to the top quickly, you’re liable to fall as quickly. Take your time. It’s a long journey ahead of you as an artist. There’s nowhere that you’re supposed to be other than right now living inside of your art.
An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.
The fact is, when you date an artist, you have to know that they’re going to sing about you.
The smallest wound or pain of the ego is examined under a microscope as if it were of eternal importance. The artist considers his isolation, his subjectivity, his individualism almost holy.
As an artist, you always want to never forget where you come from.
No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.
It’s an artist’s choice to listen to criticism or not. I’m very sensitive to criticism.
The product of the artist has become less important than the fact of the artist. We wish to absorb this person. We wish to devour someone who has experienced the tragic. In our society this person is much more important than anything he might create.
I just say I’m an artist who works with pictures and words.
She was a performance artist calling herself Lady Gaga, who had a European dance-club sound and pop-star aspirations – elements that historically haven’t mixed.
When I say art influences me, which it does, it’s not at all in a literal form. You go and see exhibitions or collections or meet an artist. It’s all a compilation. Every moment, at all times, all this information. Then all this information disappears, and it shows up later in the process.
Anybody can be a rapper, but not anybody can be a classical artist.
I swear I pick up little gems from every artist that I work with. That’s why I’m so appreciative that I’ve been able to be a songwriter first.
Tupac is my favorite artist, and he had mad style.
When have you ever heard of a cantor or any artist turning anyone down when he is strongly urged to perform?
I have no regrets, though I was the first artist to stylize the national anthem, and I got a lot of protests for it. I have no regrets. America has been good to me. I’m glad that I’m here.
As an entrepreneur, as an investor, I’m trying to be as educated as I can to where the progression of technological capability is going and what it does to these different categories that, me as an artist and an influencer, I can get involved and bring value.
The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.
A half dozen pictures would just about be enough for the life of an artist, for my life.
I fight for the debunking of the artist and an end to individual pictures.
As an independent artist, you control the means of production, which is the ultimate form of empowerment.
When I saw Adele, I thought: ‘I’ll give it an hour before people say I was her,’ just because I was fat. When you watch ‘X Factor,’ you can bet your bottom dollar, every single fat singer sounds like me as far as the judges are concerned. Can you imagine if they did that with every black artist?
Cultural confinement takes place when a curator imposes his own limits on an art exhibition, rather than asking an artist to set his limits.
My days, my years, my life has seen up and downs, lights and darknesses. If I wrote only and continually of the ‘light’ and never mentioned the other, then as an artist, I would be a liar.
Few people in contemporary art demonstrate much curiosity. The majority spend their days blathering on, rather than trying to work out why one artist is more interesting than another, or why one picture works and another doesn’t.
To me, what makes an artist is a unique personality that they’re not afraid to let show.
As an artist I come to sing, but as a citizen, I will always speak for peace, and no one can silence me in this.
I know who I am and what I’m doing in my life and what I’ve accomplished and continue to accomplish as a performer, as a writer, as an artist, as a person, as a human being.
Being the first-ever non-Korean artist at YG, it feels as if I have much more responsibility.
The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.
I want to be an artist. I don’t want to be a celebrity.
When people ask how have I kept on top, I have to say with the help of every photographer, make-up artist and hairdresser I’ve ever worked with.
I’ve always said that the experience of meeting an artist that you are in awe of and that you hope to create with one day is usually disappointing because you put them up on a pedestal, and then you’re like, ‘Wow, that’s not a nice person.’
I have always been aware that you have to get people listening before you can change their minds. Any artist’s big fear is being ignored, so if you get debate, that’s great.
Certainly there is, for the American Negro artist who can escape the restrictions the more advanced among his own group would put upon him, a great field of unused material ready for his art.
Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it ‘the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.’ The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of ‘Artist.’
If I was just a fan of music, I would think that I was the number one artist in the world.
If a man wants to be an artist, he must never look at pictures.
I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination.
A lot of people don’t know that: that Artist is my name.
Sometimes directors come to me when I have to play some horrible thing, scary or hysterical or crying; they ask, ‘Did you study somewhere to be an actress?’ No, this is life. That’s why I think I don’t want to say you need a really bad experience to be a good artist, but bad experiences in your life say something.
I don’t tweet very much. I still believe in the mystery of an artist. I believe in going out when I’m ready to sell my product. A lot of artists are out there every day. But I remember the Julio Iglesiases, the Jose Joses – and it was about the music.
I will say that a lot of art, some of the best art, has very powerful and meaningful messages behind it, and the more you read the stuff on the walls, the more you learn the artist’s intention, and you have a totally new point of view of what it’s about.
The poet, being an imitator like a painter or any other artist, must of necessity imitate one of three objects – things as they were or are, things as they are said or thought to be, or things as they ought to be. The vehicle of expression is language – either current terms or, it may be, rare words or metaphors.
I was a scam artist in high school for a while.
To an engineer, good enough means perfect. With an artist, there’s no such thing as perfect.
I really enjoy doing remixes, but I don’t want to be known as just a ‘remix artist’ for the rest of my career.
Every other artist begins with a blank canvas, a piece of paper the photographer begins with the finished product.
I think that to explore the uncomfortable and the politically incorrect is the job of the artist.
I was more than just a moody artist.
There’s a tendency to make more money at concerts. That’s from a financial standpoint. Night clubs have a better feel, better contact between the artist and the audience.
I’ve never been a die-hard fan, like a crazy fan for an artist.
The businessman says ‘If I don’t do it first, somebody else will.’ The artist says ‘If I don’t do it first, nobody else will.’
The artist is chosen by God to fulfill his commands and must never be overwhelmed by public opinion.
To be an artist you have to give up everything, including the desire to be a good artist.
I decided on the spot that I would be an artist, and I assure you, it was no ordinary artist I had in mind.
Training with Billy Robinson is just like any martial artist who would go to the old master of the art. He’s so knowledgeable.
By the time I was a teenager, I knew I wanted to be an artist. I was a born draftsman and liked all forms of art, so I just knew that’s what I wanted to do.
An artist should not fall in love with another artist.
As an artist, I feel that we must try many things – but above all we must dare to fail.
I started out as an artist, and what I do is verbal paintings. I paint a picture. Hopefully, you’ll see the characters and what they’re doing and what they’re saying.
I’m my own artist, and I see artists as movies. No one should try to change them for anything. If you don’t like it, you just don’t follow it. And if you don’t like a movie you don’t watch it. Watch another movie.
I want to be a real artist to consumers. I want to be the real thing for them.
An artist needs to live to create, and to live means to suffer.
To my mind, it is the duty of the younger Negro artist, if he accepts any duties at all from outsiders, to change through the force of his art that old whispering ‘I want to be white,’ hidden in the aspirations of his people, to ‘Why should I want to be white? I am a Negro – and beautiful!’
The hardest part of being an artist is discovering what it is you do differently.
The artist produces for the liberation of his soul. It is his nature to create as it is the nature of water to run down the hill.
Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.
As an artist, you’re pretty sheltered backstage. You often don’t know what’s going on out there.
We are going to finish this picture just the way I want it… because you cannot compromise an artist’s vision.
The biggest challenge for any craft person or artist is to accept the constraints of their medium and make something beautiful despite them. That’s kind of fun, actually.
An artist’s only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else‘s.
‘A’ comes from Artist. And ‘Boogie’ from the Bronx. ‘The Hoodie’ part came from just having a hoodie on a lot.
It is frequently the tragedy of the great artist, as it is of the great scientist, that he frightens the ordinary man.
Any artist should be grateful for a naive grace which puts him beyond the need to reason elaborately.
The test of the artist does not lie in the will with which he goes to work, but in the excellence of the work he produces.
Making social comment is an artificial place for an artist to start from. If an artist is touched by some social condition, what the artist creates will reflect that, but you can’t force it.
The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.
The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.
You can only be free as an artist if you’re free as a person.
Just as the bird sings or the butterfly soars, because it is his natural characteristic, so the artist works.
It is said an artist spends their whole life trying to get to the place where their heart was first opened up. ‘Rent’ was that place for me.
I’m really excited about what the future holds and to grow as an individual and as an artist.
I see little of more importance to the future of our country and of civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist. If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.
To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now.
Art is only a means to life, to the life more abundant. It is not in itself the life more abundant. It merely points the way, something which is overlooked not only by the public, but very often by the artist himself. In becoming an end it defeats itself.
I am an artist, you understand? 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.
An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor of the age and not go flopping along.
An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.
I grew as an artist and a person. I’m just ready to work, get this money, get this new fan base and tour all over the world.
Just as most of us prefer to watch a trapeze artist work without a net, we like to be absolutely sure that a virtuoso is giving us our money’s worth, and a seemingly effortless performance, no matter how spectacular it may be, deprives us of that slightly sadistic thrill.
The beautiful is in nature, and it is encountered under the most diverse forms of reality. Once it is found it belongs to art, or rather to the artist who discovers it.
Where I know I wanna go is being consistent on business, and that’s just making another artist, my clothing line – capitalizing off the moment. I wanna be consistently doing that – capitalizing off every move I make.
I wanna be an artist on the whole; I don’t wanna be within a genre.
I’m a fairly tormented artist, and I’m less willing to indulge myself in self-pity, outside of songwriting.
I’ve been called many names like perfectionist, difficult and obsessive. I think it takes obsession, takes searching for the details for any artist to be good.
Good, well-defined, well-honed art is not a foreign language. You can sell it to people. You just have to move your ego out of the way, clear out the unfinished fantasies you have about being an artist yourself, and just sell it.
The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person.
Nature is garrulous to the point of confusion, let the artist be truly taciturn.
