American Artist Quotes

A professor I had in college used to tell me that if someone won't listen to what you have to say because you're not wearing a tie, then put on a tie, 'cause what you have to say is more important than not wearing a tie. He was right.

I think that if advanced beings were visiting Earth, we'd know it by their laughter.

The worship leader God is after is the one whose heart is captured by Him.

I absolutely hate technology, and I'm computer illiterate, and I never use any labor-saving devices although I'm not convinced that a computer is a labor-saving device.

For my generation, Judd posed the same problem as Picasso did for the Abstract Expressionists; you either had to go over, under, around, or through him. Conceptual, process, and Earth Art, each in their own way, constituted a rejection of the 'speciﬁc object'.

The time approaches when men must take their choice between quiescent, immobile faith and ever-advancing Science - faith, with its medieval consolations, Science, which is incessantly scattering its material blessings in the pathway of life, elevating the lot of man in this world, and unifying the human race.

John William Draper

I wanted to get it all down, maybe out of my system. I wanted to be able to say, Everything's possible-if you believe and can get excited.

I could lose myself forever in that dark hair and those sweet love handles.

Good ideas have no value because the world already has too many of them. The market rewards execution, not ideas.

Labor has been one of the most important aspects of our development.... It isn't grand, but it is important and it is a thing that we should be proud of, because we have that part of our life that has gone into the building of America. Not only of ourselves, but in the building of American life.

On why he became a vegetarian:

We were selling books, and right next to us was an old man. [...] he was a holistic nutritionist, and he was talking to us about how you shouldn't really eat animals and things of that nature … and he pulled up his shirt and the man had the abs of a 15-year-old. He says to us [...] How old do you think I am? And we thought he was about 50 years old, and he's like, I'm 86 years old. … We looked at each other, me and my friends, and we were, like, when we're 86, we want to be like that …. So that's what started it.

Jeru the Damaja

Order seems to come from searching for disorder, and awkwardness from searching for harmony or likeness, or the following of a system. The truest order is what you already find there, or that will be given if you don't try for it. When you arrange, you fail.

Fairfield Porter

Long ago it was said that 'one half of the world does not know how the other half lives.' That was true then. It did not know because it did not care. The half that was on top cared little for the struggles, and less for the fate, of those who were underneath, so long as it was able to hold them there and keep its own seat.

Methods of locomotion have improved greatly in recent years, but places to go remain about the same.

A lot of good and regular art gets made because of who you talk to. No one is immune to human contact and art is not made in a vacuum.

Expatriate? It appears to me that in order to be an expatriate one has to be, in some manner, driven from one's fatherland, from one's native land.... One must belong before one may then not belong.

Beauford Delaney

Our agricultural colleges continue to graduate specialists who become vocational agricultural teachers in the schools, and county agents, who go forth to extol the virtues of poison insecticides, herbicides, and commercial fertilizers.

In my work, the information is the least important part. It's there, and the work wouldn't mean the same thing without it, but it isn't structured around the information. The most interesting part to me is the visual play... looking at this little universe of representation that I can make out of the world.

A rain-tight roof, frugal living, a box of colors, and God's sunlight through clear windows keep the soul attuned and the body vigorous for one's daily work.

Albert Pinkham Ryder

People like me, who care about printing, constitute the tiniest lunatic fringe in the nation.

I've found it's better to talk to the machine and hang up if I get the person.

Cathy Guisewite

Forget all the rules you ever learned
about graphic design.

Bob Gill (artist)

How to paint the landscape: First you make your bow to the landscape. Then you wait, and if the landscape bows to you, then, and only then, can you paint the landscape.

It's a mistake to ask a work of art to be all things to all people.

I want to express the utmost intensity of the color, bring out the quality, make it expressive.

Adolph Gottlieb