American Artist Quotes

Andy Warhol

Man Ray

Kanye West

Georgia O'Keeffe

James McNeill Whistler

Leonard Nimoy

Mark Rothko

I don't believe in making pencil sketches and then painting landscape in your studio. You must be right under the sky.

William Merritt Chase

Photography records the gamut of feelings written on the human face, the beauty of the earth and skies that man has inherited, and the wealth and confusion man has created. [It is] a major force in explaining man to man.

Edward Steichen

The figure is still the only thing I have faith in in terms of how much emotion it's charged with and how much subject matter is there.

Impressionism was the name given to a certain form of observation when Monet, not content with using his eyes to see what things were or what they looked like as everybody had done before him, turned his attention to noting what took place on his own retina (as an oculist would test his own vision).

John Singer Sargent

Photography deals exquisitely with appearances, but nothing is what it appears to be.

It is what it is, and it ain't nothin' else... Everything is clearly, openly, plainly delivered.

I like church. It's empty when I go. I walk around. There are so many beautiful Catholic churches in New York.

When I say I want to photograph someone, what it really means is that I'd like to know them. Anyone I know I photograph.

Annie Leibovitz

One of the ongoing themes in my work, I hope, and one of the things I believe in, is a sense of human nature, a sense of shared humanity above the cultural layers we place on ourselves [which don't] mean that much compared to the human experience.

Love must be learned, and learned again and again; there is no end to it. Hate needs no instruction, but waits only to be provoked.

Katherine Porter

Photography, as we all know, is not real at all. It is an illusion of reality with which we create our own private world.

A portrait is not a likeness. The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph, it is an opinion. There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.

On his 1985 book, In The American West

Painting directly from nature is difficult as things do not remain the same; the camera helps to retain the picture in your mind.

Theodore Robinson

I strive to express the spiritual nature of the Universe. Painting for me is a dynamic balance and wholeness of life; it is mysterious and transcending, yet solid and real.

Richard Pousette-Dart

The function of art is to free the spirit of man and to invigorate and enlarge his vision.

Katherine Sophie Dreier

How lovely are the portals of the night, when stars come out to watch the daylight die.

In the beginning there was Isis: Oldest of the Old, She was the Goddess from whom all Becoming Arose. She was the Great Lady, Mistress of the two Lands of Egypt, Mistress of Shelter, Mistress of Heaven, Mistress of the House of Life, Mistress of the word of God. She was the Unique. In all Her great and wonderful works She was a wiser magician and more excellent than any other God.

To reclaim our past and insist that it become a part of our human history is the task that lies before us. For the future requires that women, as well as men, shape the world destiny.

The desert... may serve better as the backdrop for the problematic relationship between man and the environment. The human struggle, the successes... both noble and foolish, are readily apparent in the desert. Symbols and relationships seem to arise that stand for the human condition itself.

Richard Misrach

I sometimes think that there is nothing but time, that what you see and what you feel is what time looks like at that moment.

To photograph is often compared to an act of redemption - to select from an infinite number of choices that which is to be remembered.

I acknowledge the privilege of being alive in a human body at this moment, endowed with senses, memories, emotions, thoughts, and the space of mind in its wisdom aspect.

There are infinite modes of expression in the world of art, and to insist that only by one road can the artist attain his ends is to limit him.

Cutting carbs, fats, or calories (dieting) is like trying to hold your breath. The longer you do it, the more your body resists it until you finally gasp for air – taking in more than ever to overcome the short-term deficit you induced.

Painting, sculpture and architecture are finished, but the art habit continues.

Robert Smithson