Quotes About Artist

I don't think you have to earn your income as an artist to be an artist. But if you are an artist, then art is what you do, whether or not you're paid for doing it; it is what you do, not what you are. I regard artist not as a description of temperament but as a category of profession, of vocation.

There's no diploma in the world that declares you as an artist—it's not like becoming a doctor. You can declare yourself an artist and then figure out how to be an artist.

It ought to be illegal for an artist to marry. If the artist must marry let him find someone more interested in art, or his art, or the artist part of him, than in him. After which let them take tea together three times a week.

When I was setting out to be an artist, I said: If I can just produce one work that some people think is good, if I can become an obscure cult artist, that's all I want. Well, I attained that. I'm an obscure cult artist, and I think now, Why didn't I say I want to be another Picasso or something? What other options were open to me? But I was convinced I couldn't achieve great things because I don't have a steady-state mind.

Because Ivy [Wilkes] is just starting out as an artist, I wanted to focus on [Georgia] O'Keeffe's experiences when she was just starting out. I suspect there is a difference between being an unknown artist and being a celebrated artist. When nobody knows your work, nobody except you really cares whether or not you paint.

Every man who is any kind of artist has a great deal of female in him. I act and give of myself as a man, but I register and receive with the soul of a woman. The only really good artists are feminine. I can't admit the existence of an artist whose dominant personality is masculine.

Once I knew that I wanted to be an artist, I had made myself into one. I did not understand that wanting doesn't always lead to action. Many of the women had been raised without the sense that they could mold and shape their own lives, and so, wanting to be an artist (but without the ability to realize their wants) was, for some of them, only an idle fantasy, like wanting to go to the moon.

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

An artist creates songs and timeless moments that are reflections that impact culture, and you can do that in any way - with guitars, ukelele, a computer. So, that will never die. It's always the artist behind the computer, not the computer.

I leave the genre labeling to other people. I really do. If I were to think too hard about it, that would stifle you creatively. If you think too hard about who other people want you to be as an artist, it stops you from being who you want to be as an 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.

I was never shielded from the realities of what it meant to be an artist and that made me afraid to be an artist because I wanted to know that my life was secure.

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

Every time I'm in the studio, I always think of my professor in undergrad. He was like, "There are so many artists in the world. If you're going to be an artist, make sure you have something to say. Don't just be an artist and put out bullshit. Have something to say." I guess that would be my philosophy and something I think about all the time. Every day when I'm in the studio I hear him and I see him. I remember him saying it in class. So that's something that I always want to make sure I have: I'm saying something with the work.

The artist is not a special kind of man, but every man is a special kind of artist.

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.

Only a bad artist thinks he has a good idea. A good artist does not need anything.

Every artist, every scientist, must decide now where he stands. He has no alternative. There is no standing above the conflict on Olympian heights. There are no impartial observers. Through the destruction, in certain countries, of the greatest of man's literary heritage, through the propagation of false ideas of racial and national superiority, the artist, the scientist, the writer is challenged. The struggle invades the formerly cloistered halls of our universities and other seats of learning. The battlefront is everywhere. There is no sheltered rear.

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.

The technician should never forget that he is an artist, the artist never that he is a technician

I invest because I'm really a firm believer in letting the artist make their work, if you choose to work with an artist then you give them the go-ahead.

Every artist - even if they do Superman, they do Batman, and things like that - they are speaking about his life. Every person, every artist makes his life an artwork.

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.

Those titles, Executive Producer or actor, are unimportant. I always try to approach my role as an artist. The first thing you want to do, that you attempt to do as an artist, is to have some sort of input into the material that you are working on. That is how my process begins; I say to myself: "I want to do this kind of work or I want to do that kind of work."

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

I remember the excitement of being a new artist. When up and coming artists ask me like, "Any advice you have for me?" I always say, "Take it all in because you'll never be a new artist again".

I have a general feeling that writers and artists who are in this peculiar situation, of being a persecuted artist, all anyone ever asks about is the persecution. It may well be that's the last thing in the world they want to talk about. There were many years in which every journalist in the world wanted to talk to me, but nobody wanted to talk to me about my work. That felt deeply frustrating because I felt there was an attempt to stifle me as an artist. The best revenge I could have was to write.

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.

I've been an artist forever. I started when I was in the third grade. I drew drawings of monsters and I sold them to my classmates for a dime. I studied painting. Originally I was a design and illustration major, but I met this girl. Back then, if you were a designer, you were a real sellout, and she was a real hardcore painter. I knew she would never take me seriously unless I was an art major, so I switched majors to fine arts. Anyway, we're married now. So it worked. How I got to my style? I'm a weird artist in that everything I do looks a little different.

Is it the responsibility of the colored artist or the ethnic artist to create works that are designed to exist in opposition to a certain political structure?

There's not too many artist that can handle what we would call an Christian R&B sound. It's kind of a limited field as far as singers go. Just hoping that more artist like that can resonate and grow.In terms of female rappers, man hey come on! We're here...come talk to us!

She became politically conscious thanks to Studs Terkel and the radio. She started reading all the books we brought home from college and was a great fan of Noam Chomsky. She was a real lefty and yet was not able to meet her dream of becoming an artist. She got drafted into motherhood big time - seven kids - and that wasn't the life that she had planned. So she opened the path so that I could be the artist that she wanted to be.

Art really has its source in the transcendent, the unmanifest field of pure consciousness, which is the non-changing, immortal field of all possibilities...When the awareness of the artist is in tune with this center of infinite creativity, his piece of art breathes fullness of life, nourishes the creator, the artist, and inspires his admirers with waves of bliss.

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

Every artist makes herself born. You must bring the artist into the world yourself.

The refusal to be creative is an act of self-will and is counter to our true nature. When we are open to our creativity, we are opening to God: good, orderly direction. As we pursue our creative fulfillment, all elements of our life move toward harmony. As we strengthen our creativity, we strengthen our connection to the Creator within. Artists love other artists. Our relationship to God is co-creative, artist to artist. It is God's will for us to live in creative abundance.

Added to the moral solitude of the murderer comes the solitude of the artist, which can acknowledge no authority, save that of another 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.

The longer I've been writing scripts, the more I find that you have to give the artist more leeway or else you'll just be disappointed. You can't force them to draw every image that's in your head. Since I'm a horrific artist, I wouldn't want them to anyway. So I definitely give them a lot more leeway now than I did at the beginning.

An artist is only an artist on condition that he neglects no aspect of his dual nature. This dualism is the power of being oneself and someone else at one and the same time.

Early in school, they called me 'the artist.' When teachers wanted things painted, they called upon me, they called upon 'the artist.' I am not saying that I learned my name, animals can learn their names, I am saying that they learned it.

Once you're a Motown artist, you're always a Motown 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.

I just want to be the biggest artist that I can be, and I want to make a difference. I feel like Michael (Jackson) made a difference with everything that he did. He was so charitable and just always on-point. I just want to be where he is, as an artist.

My process in making a music video is pretty much a formula of talking to the artist. I've never made a video where I didn't talk to the artist before I wrote the treatment. Basically, I enter into it knowing we are collaborators.

One thing about Kurt [Cobain] is before he was a musician, and before he was a rock star, he was an artist, and an artist with a capital A. What that means is that he had to create. It wasn't something that he chose to do - it chose him.

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.

I'm definitely not an outsider artist. I'm very much an insider artist. I get written about in art magazines, and I'm not, like, in a mental institution. I'm a regular guy who went to art school.