American Artist Quotes

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

It was clear, I was not Manet's type. Picasso—who had a way with women—only used me & Duchamp never even considered me.

Carrie Mae Weems

By Interstate 70: a dog skeleton, a vacuum cleaner, TV dinners, a doll, a pie, rolls of carpet.Later, next to the South Platte River: algae, broken concrete, jet contrails, the smell of crude oil. What I hope to document, though not at the expense of surface detail, is the form that underlies this apparent chaos.

Robert Adams (photographer)

No matter what part of nature one studies — microbes or Milky Ways — there is a point where one begins, but never an end.

We have this history of impossible solutions to insoluble problems.

Facts are the barren branches on which we hang the dear, obscuring foliage of our dreams.

Natalie Babbitt

Forgive me not! Hate me and I shall know Some of love's fire still burns in your breast! Forgiveness finds its home in hearts at rest, On dead volcanoes only lies the snow.

Lilla Cabot Perry

When you reach round a dark corner to switch on a light, be careful. Slenderman will often run his finger over the back of your hand. This is the first signal of his interest in you.

The freeze of a photographic gesture, the fix of an action, how an arm twists, how a smile gets momentarily stabilized or exaggerated - to try to get some of this is important... The photofix inflects the almost literal shaping of a figure, changes of movement or potential movement, and a sense of occurrence or event.

I think there is an element of magic in photography - light, chemistry, precious metals - a certain alchemy. You can wield a camera like a magic wand almost. Murmur the right words and you can conjure up proof of a dream. I believe in wonder. I look for it in my life every day; I find it in the most ordinary things.

Keith Carter (photographer)

One day I gave Clifford a bath. And I combed his hair and took hom to the dog show. I'd like to say Clifford won first prize...but he didn't. I don't care. You can keep all your small dogs. You can keep all your black, white, brown, and spotted dogs. I'll keep Clifford...Wouldn't you?

Norman Bridwell

Usually I think if there is something imperfect in a photograph it makes the picture more real. Photographs that are slick, smooth, and imperfect seem less honest to me.

If I am interested, amazed, stimulated to work, that is sufficient reason to thank the gods, and go ahead!

What is it about our specific belief in God and His wishes that makes us so angry at the specific beliefs of another? What is it about the teachings of our respective deities that makes us more right than the next person? Or more wrong?

I have found that try as I will, I cannot escape the nemesis of my color. I believe, deep in my heart, that the dark tinge of my skin is the thing that has been my making. For you see, I have had to work 100 percent harder to realize my ambition.

Archibald Motley

Forget all the rules you ever learned
about graphic design.

Bob Gill (artist)

In a world of disturbing images, the general body of photography is bland, dealing complacently with nature and treating our preconceptions as insights. Strange, private worlds rarely slip past our guard...

Henry Holmes Smith

Everything that I have told you is, of course, a fairy tale. Life is magical, after all. Nothing is safe and everything changes.

Trina Schart Hyman

You can write a letter with a typewriter, a pencil, or a crayon. What you have to say is the important thing.

Any fool can write a book and most of them are doing it; but it takes brains to build a house.

Charles Fletcher Lummis

Sculpture is for the touch, painting is for the eye. I wanted to make a sculpture for the eye and a painting for the touch.

Richard Artschwager

What affected me most profoundly was the realization that the sciences of cryptography and mathematics are very elegant, pure sciences. I found that the ends for which these pure sciences are used are less elegant.

I like the idea that the sacred photo framing process is equally violatible and I think that's partly a carryover from the way I deal with structures to the way I deal with photography.

Gordon Matta-Clark

There's an arc of being. There's a beginning, then the peak is reached and then there's the end. It's like the pole vaulter who begins his run, shoots up, then comes down. At the peak there is no movement. He's neither going up nor going down. It is that moment I wait for.