Artist Quotes

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.

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.

Anyone who enjoys inner peace is no more broken by failure as he is inflated by success. He is able to fully live his experiences in the context of a vast and profound serenity, since he understands that experiences are ephemeral and that it is useless to cling to them.

Matthieu Ricard

If it hurt me to have to give up a painting I figured it had to hurt them to write the check. That's how I came up with the price for my work.

Making a cartoon occupied usually about three full days, two spent in labour and one in removing the appearance of labour.

Does any sane man imagine that the church could cease to be missionary and remain the church?

This century has needed witnesses more than it has needed artists. The camera asserts what it has seen. The artists are just looking.

I believe that most of us would like to be thought well of by horses.

A tower of illusion, all of it, made of illusory bricks and full of holes. If life were made up only of imporant things, it really would be a dangerous house of glass, scarcely to be handled carelessly. But everyday life was exactly like the headlines. And so everybody, knowing the meaninglessness of existence, sets the centre of his compass at his own home.

I am interested only in the unknown and I work for my own astonishment.

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

Joshua Reynolds

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

Since 1873, I have been back four or five times. I have used the best cameras and the most sensitive emulsions on the market. I have snapped my shutter, morning, noon and afternoon. I have never come close to matching those first plates. (On photographing The Mountain of the Holy Cross)

William Henry Jackson

We have plenty of grass, and as we all know, dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope.

Gilbert Shelton

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

Oscar Florianus Bluemner

When you are interested in life more than you are in painting, then your paintings can come to life.

You can love a woman. To admire her is hard. You are not dealing with something important.

I want to take retirement rather than feel as if it's taking me unawares. Maybe even seize it joyously. But at least behold it without looking back so longingly that I turn into a pillar of regret.

F I was an Optician, - I think that I would almost as willingly - Waltz blindfold and barefoot among 9 Red hot Ploughshares laid at unequal distances from each other, - as have All my Telescopes tried by that truly troublesome test a Fixed Star.

William Kitchiner

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.

There is no communication with any public whatsoever. The artist can ask no question, and he makes no statement; he offers no information, and his work cannot be used. It is the end product which counts.

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

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.

When you see 300 people naked in Grand Central Station, or a river of flesh flowing through the beauty aisles of Selfridges department store, it makes you think about all sorts of social and political issues.

I still have a lot of pleasure doing them, but as time goes by I come to appreciate more clearly which paintings are good and which should be discarded.