Quotes About Artist

The critic, to interpret his artist, even to understand his artist, must be able to get into the mind of his artist; he must feel and comprehend the vast pressure of the creative passion.

I've been asked often what is the difference between an amateur and a professional artist, and I will tell you. An amateur artist is one who works all week at something else so he can paint on Saturday and Sunday. A professional artist is one whose wife works so he can paint all the time.

For a long time, I've distinguished between entertainer and performer and entertainer and artist. To me, an entertainer is someone who pleases others, and an artist tries to please himself.

If sometimes our great artists have been the most critical of our society, it is because their sensitivity and their concern for justice, which must motivate any true artist, makes him aware that our nation falls short of its highest potential. I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist.

Stop thinking about writing as art. Think of it as work. If you’re an artist, whatever you do is going to be art. If you’re not an artist, at least you can do a good day’s work.

We might say that both the artist and theneurotic bite off more than they can chew, but the artist spews it back out again and chews it over in an objectified way, as an ex­ternal, active, work project.

The only thing one can give an artist is leisure in which to work. To give an artist leisure is actually to take part in his creation.

Are you an artist? Look about you. Is there a physical tool whose use you have mastered, a part of your body that responds utterly to your control? Is your motive esthetic? If so, you are an artist. If not, you are probably a writer.

It is not about which artist is more skilled than which other artist. It is about creating what is in you to create. A lack of confidence in oneself is like a thief, It steals from the world that which might be worthy.

The only happy artist is a dead artist, because only then you can't change. After I die, I'll probably come back as a paintbrush.

... an artist is a person first. He is an individual. If there is no person, there is no artist.

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.

No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.

What a model of an artist was for me was an artist who worked. Picasso was the ultimate model, because the work ethic he had.

The artist who is after success lets himself be influenced by the public. Generally such an artist contributes nothing new, for the public acclaims only what it already knows, what it recognizes.

When you give an artist a canvas, you shouldn't tell him exactly how much paint to put on it, or exactly how sharp the images should be. You should let the artist get going.

I'm older now, and I been through that, like, 'Stop. Tell the truth, what I need to do?' And I think that's important, as far as artist, for me to stand for what I believe in, And a lot of times people don't like that, you know what I'm saying. You become a troubled artist, or, 'You don't listen,' but as long as I say 'Yeah, I'll do it!' I'm a good person.

The camera for an artist is just another tool. It is no more mechanical than a violin if you analyze it. Beyond the rudiments, it is up to the artist to create art, not the camera.

The literary artist lends verbal depth to the visual. The visual artist provides visible articulation for the literary.

My teacher introduced me to this photographer Eugène Atget. He was a French photographer in the late 1800s up until 1927 in Paris. He didn't consider himself an artist, but he was probably one of the artists of the 20th century. This guy documented all of Paris during those years. It's unbelievable. The books are phenomenal. The Museum of Modern Art has all his stuff now and [American photographer] Berenice Abbott saved his work. Not very much is known about his life, but the work is unreal and it totally spoke to me. He was the only artist for a number of years that I cared about at all.

THING TO TRY: If you are asked to describe a suspect to a police sketch artist, describe in precise detail, the features of the police sketch artist. This is one of the rare instances where two people can do one self-portrait.

In the hierarchy, the artist faces outward. Meeting someone new he asks himself, What can this person do for me? How can this person advance my standing? In the hierarchy, the artist looks up and looks down. The one place he can't look is that place he must: within.

...why is an artist an artist? Artists simply do feel and see things in a different way to other people. In a way it's a blessing, but it can also be a terrible curse. There's a great deal of satisfaction to be earned from it but often it's also a terrible burden.

It was not my dream to be an artist. How could it have been? I thought, artist, much like a leader, was something you either were or weren't. Never something you set out to be.

If you are born an artist, you have no choice but to fight to stay an artist.

I have a friend who's an artist, and he sometimes takes a view which I don't agree with. He'll hold up a flower and say, "Look how beautiful it is," and I'll agree. But then he'll say, "I, as an artist, can see how beautiful a flower is. But you, as a scientist, take it all apart and it becomes dull." I think he's kind of nutty. [...] There are all kinds of interesting questions that come from a knowledge of science, which only adds to the excitement and mystery and awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts.

I wanted to be acknowledged as an artist, not just some kiddie-book artist.

I'm not a pop rapper. That's nothing against pop music - I love pop music. I've jumped on pop records for people and still will, but I'm not a pop artist. I didn't start from there. I started in underground music. I consider myself an underground artist, as well as a producer.

I want to be real. I want to be a real person. That's what an artist is. An artist has to be honest. Without honesty, there's nothing.

The public so often want to freeze the artist in a moment in time when they were at their peak, and they want the artist to revisit it over and over again as if it was something authentic.

I know who I am as an artist. I've always known who I am as an artist.

No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style.

A record deal doesn't make you an artist; you make yourself an artist.

It was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. How the artist captured the light, the details of my mother's dimples, the joy in my father's eyes, all through gentle strokes from his palette. The artist made me look alive when I felt lonely and grim inside. That's the way this man saw me. I decided then that that's what I wanted to do

If you want to be an artist, go to every art gallery, if you want to be in movies, see movies! You have to participate in whichever world you're trying to enter! You have to know what's going on. You can be the best artist in the world but if you don't know one thing about which gallery to go to, you're never going to get it shown in the right place. Learn a little bit about the business of whichever art you're trying to get into. Without it, you will be lost.

I'm a performance artist first; I'm a recording artist second.

Any artist always has misgivings about calling himself an artist.

When you're from the East Coast or you're from the South, people expect you to sound a certain way. So if you don't sound that way, people won't label you as that type of artist. For me, I had a whole new lane to create for myself being from Pittsburgh and being a Midwest artist.

There were a lot of choices to make and I always picked artist. I never once picked doctor, lawyer, firemen or something like that. It was always artist.

The artist can within limits make what he likes of his life... It is only the artist, and maybe the criminal, who can make his own.

I believe that the artist's feelings are in some way generative. And I suspect that much of the artist's most productive emotion - not all of it but much of it - is felt in the course of playing around with form.

I'm not necessarily interested in being the best Indian artist. I want to be the best artist I can be. That's enough of a declaration of intent.

I lived there [ in New York City] as an artist, but never as a Chinese artist.

I'm not an artist that makes singles, I'm an artist that makes albums, and it's a totally different thing.

He was an artist when he saw society: it never crossed his mind that society had to be like this; had any right, had any business being like this. A car in the street. Why? Why cars? This is what an artist has to be: harassed to the point of insanity or stupefaction by first principles.

Love is the spirit that motivates the artist's journey. The love may sublime, raw, obsessive, passionate, awful. or thrilling, but whatever its quality, it's a powerful motive in the artist's life.

My advice to any budding artist is never to be satisfied with imitating others. This is but a means to an end. A serious artist will work with intensity to discover themselves, their own personal vision. I believe this is a fundamental aspect of the creative path.

I think functioning as a business manager can be a hindrance to having a real dialogue with the artist. I do think that artists need good lawyers and accountants, because they're dealing with serious money. But an artist who stands behind a manager? That's a little different. I think that can be a bad buffer.