American Artist Quotes

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

People who hate what I make hate me, too. They must think I am a demon or some kind of evil sorcerer. Those who understand what I do appreciate the determination, love, and courage it takes to find wonder and beauty in people who are considered by society to be damaged, unclean, dysfunctional, or wretched.

Joel-Peter Witkin

When you feel colors, you will understand the why of their forms.

Oscar Florianus Bluemner

Didn't it make sense that after something horrible happens, something better should follow?

Always watch the hands. The hands will tell you everything you need to know.

I value the referential quality of art, the fact that a work can allude to things or states of being without in any way representing them.

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.

What we see changes what we know. What we know changes what we see. Perception, belief, action, and change are codependent.

John Paul Caponigro

Life without labor is crime, and labor without art is brutality.

John Wesley Hardrick

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

Most of us are animal lovers. We insist that we love all animals equally - the hamster, the weasel, and the zebra - but if pressed, we will admit to being either a cat person or a dog person.

Nicole Hollander

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)

The last mad throb of red just as it turns green; the ultimate shriek of orange calling all the blues of heaven for relief and support... each color almost regains the fun it must have felt within itself on forming the first rainbow.

My pictures are not that interesting, nor the subject matter. They are simply a collection of facts; my book is more like a collection of Ready-mades.

God knows, there's enough to worry about without worrying about worrying about things.

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

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.