Artist Quotes

Love is a disease which fills you with a desire to be desired.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

As paradoxical as it may seem a great sculptor is as much a colourist as the best painter, or rather the best engraver. He plays so skillfully with all the resources of relief, he blends so well the boldness of light with the modesty of shadow, that his sculptures please one, as much as the most charming etchings.

Sculpture is the essence of things, the essence of nature, that which is perpetually human.

Wilhelm Lehmbruck

It is not bright colors but good drawing that makes figures beautiful.

One winter morning Peter woke up and looked out the window. Snow had fallen during the night. It covered everything as far as he could see.

Ezra Jack Keats

And see the rivers how they run Through woods and meads, in shade and sun, Sometimes swift, sometimes slow, Wave succeeding wave, they go A various journey to the deep, Like human life to endless sleep!

If the artist is not to lose much of his ancient purpose he may have to plunder the popular arts to recover the imagery which is his rightful inheritance.

Richard Hamilton (artist)

Some of the greatest conflicts are not between two people but between one person and himself.

I must admit that I am not a member of the ugly school. I have a great regard for certain notions of beauty even though to some it is an old fashioned idea. Some photographers think that by taking pictures of human misery, they are addressing a serious problem. I do not think that misery is more profound than happiness.

The secret of photography is, the camera takes on the character and personality of the handler.

It is really too ridiculous for a reasonably intelligent person to expose himself to this kind of administrative caprice.

Frédéric Bazille

Success based on anything but internal fulfillment is bound to be empty.

Martha Friedman

I'm a sucker for tragedy - I love the death scenes.

Learning history is easy; learning its lessons seems almost impossibly difficult.

Nicolas Bentley

When I'm painting the picture, I'm really painting a picture. I may have a flat-footed technique, or something like that, but still, to me, the thrill, or the meat of the thing, is the actual painting. I don't get any thrill out of laying it out.

Fundamentally, the camera is nothing more than a light-tight box, having an arrangement for holding a light-sensitive substance (plate or film) and a device (lens or pinhole) for projecting on this sensitive substance an image of objects external to the camera.

Paul Lewis Anderson

What is spiritual experience? A snowflake melting, a bee sucking honey, a fat man at a traffic light. Trivia.

Frederick Franck

An eye critically nice can only be formed by observing well-colored pictures with attention.

Joshua Reynolds

I love the abandonment to impulse, I act from impulse only, and I love to madness that others do the same by me.

Jeanne Julie Éléonore de Lespinasse

If the glass there in front of me astounds me more than all the glasses I've seen in painting, and if I even think that the greatest architectural wonder of the world couldn't affect me more than this glass, it's really not worth while going to the Indies to see some temple or other when I have as much and more right in front of me.

Alberto Giacometti

It takes between three and six hours to make each snowball, depending on snow quality. Wet snow is quick to work with but also quick to thaw, which can lead to a tense journey to the cold store.

Andy Goldsworthy

We love a genius for what he leaves and mourn him for what he takes away

Thomas Gainsborough

Writers have written eloquently of the joys of walking, but the magic of walking is something more than pleasure. It is a true magic, a psychophysical alchemy, which transforms the body and the mind.

What trace of the creature subsists in the work. It is a way of staying alone, passing the time subjected to the object — silent, still. Walk with humility in the landscape. To be some natural thing — an ancient tree — no thinking — not to think is central to the activity.

The attitude and capacity of the factory, the old metal table and the new ideas of the wooden furniture quickly and naturally suggested the possibility of metal furniture.