Artist Quotes

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.

The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.

I've been asked to do a retrospective since I was about 28 and I always thought that was a bit odd. It's great to look forward as an artist because in the future the possibilities are infinite; you look back and it's all fixed so it's a scary thing.

Besides me wanting to be an artist, I wanted to be a movie star.

Every time you work, you have to do it all over again, to rid yourself of this dross. I suppose for a person who is not an artist or not attempting art, it is not dross, because it is the common exchange of everyday life.

It's the role of the artist to pursue content.

My life is as an artist, not an entertainer. I don't consider myself an entertainer, but I can do that thing when I want to.

As an artist your first loyalty is to your art. Unless this is the case, you're going to be a second-rate artist.

The first four and a half years was me in the studio every day, writing songs for other people. I had jobs, too - eleven jobs. I worked at Kinko's, Fatburger, Subway - I was a sandwich artist - and I was a claims processor at Allstate Insurance.

No student of history can fail to see the moral interest of the Middle Ages, any more than an artist can fail to see their aesthetic interest.

In art, the only one who really knows whether what you've done is honest is the artist.

Every artist was first an amateur.

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.

I was just, like, not at all the office type; I was the artist type.

There are two men inside the artist, the poet and the craftsman. One is born a poet. One becomes a craftsman.

Being a cover artist is not like being a real artist. That's just copying what someone else did.

The war was a mirror; it reflected man's every virtue and every vice, and if you looked closely, like an artist at his drawings, it showed up both with unusual clarity.

Whether he is an artist or not, the photographer is a joyous sensualist, for the simple reason that the eye traffics in feelings, not in thoughts.

In order for the artist to have a world to express he must first be situated in this world, oppressed or oppressing, resigned or rebellious, a man among men.

I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.

I'm competitive with anyone who writes a good song - I don't care if it's a band or solo artist or whoever.

I mean, I don't think I would call Claus to do an album of big band tunes. You know, just like arrangers write for the artist they have in mind; you have to keep in mind if you're going to work with Claus Ogerman. You invite him to do what he does.

I always knew would be some sort of artist, but didn't know what.

An artist is his own fault.

Art and works of art do not make an artist; sense and enthusiasm and instinct do.

As an artist, you don't think about the parabola or the arc you're describing or where you're going to ultimately end up, you're just kind of crawling around, seeing what's out there.

I've been touring for so long, I've kind of honed into exactly what I am, I'm an artist so if you like it, you like it, if you don't you don't, you know?

The artist is a member of the leisured classes who cannot pay for his leisure.

To the artist is sometimes granted a sudden, transient insight which serves in this matter for experience. A flash, and where previously the brain held a dead fact, the soul grasps a living truth! At moments we are all artists.

I am not a painter, nor an artist. Therefore I can see straight, and that may be my undoing.