Canadian Artist Quotes

Yousuf Karsh
Brion Gysin
Edward Mitchell Bannister
John Howe (illustrator)
Lawren Harris
Kenojuak Ashevak
Rawi Hage

People ask me how long it took to make a work. I reply by giving them my age.

Where you point the camera is the question and the picture you get is the answer to decipher.

My personal interest in ordinary people is unlimited, but I am fascinated by the challenge of portraying true greatness adequately with my camera.

Yousuf Karsh
Yousuf Karsh
In cities it is useless to look at the stars or to describe them, worship them, or seek direction from them. When lost, one should follow the tracks of the camels.

Rawi Hage
Rawi Hage
In the next 25 years, the human race will have to decide whether or not to preserve the bestiary of Nature's living masterpieces. Ashes and Snow is not meant to tell people to do some things and not to do other things. It's meant to inspire. I hope it's not a requiem.

Gregory Colbert
Gregory Colbert
He becomes the interpreter of the infinite, subtle qualities of the spiritual idea centering in all created things, expounding for us the laws of beauty... revealing to us glimpses of the absolute idea of perfect harmony.

Edward Mitchell Bannister
Edward Mitchell Bannister
If we view a great mountain soaring into the sky, it may excite us, evoke an uplifted feeling within us. There is an interplay of something we see outside of us with our inner response. The artist takes that response and its feelings and shapes it on canvas with paint so that when finished it contains the experience.

Lawren Harris
Lawren Harris
Rentals sank, living rose. I could not afford help. I must be owner, agent, landlady and janitor. I loathed landladying... I tried in every way to augment my income. Small fruit, hens, rabbits, dogs - pottery... I never painted now - had neither time nor wanting. For about fifteen years I did not paint.

Drawing is giving yourself up to an exercise with no immediate application. It is a form of communion with your subject, be it in front of you or in your head. Expertise and skill go hand in hand with your desire to express feelings, to tell stories, to create and share worlds. It's personal.

John Howe (illustrator)
John Howe (illustrator)
The toughest question has always been, "How do you get your ideas?" How do you answer that? It's like asking runners how they run, or singers how they sing. They just do it!

Stop trying to impress some art-school teacher with a stick up his butt whose opinions you never respected from the time you entered his class until you left it 10 years ago. Draw like you.

I have come to see that an artist is not given a form - a style - but his nature merely gives him the ingredients wherewith to shape an equation of life.

Drawing is the simplest way of establishing a picture vocabulary because it is an instant, personal declaration of what is important and what is not.

Let me make this clear: Ren & Stimpy really is a children's show. It was made for kids. I'm not putting anything in there that I don't think a kid can watch, or should watch. It's completely a kid's show.

John Kricfalusi
John Kricfalusi
Within the context of Western music, jazz has always contained certain radical or revolutionary aspects. These are: improvisation, collective composition and individuality or the personal sound (based on amazing variations in sonority, timbre and pitch).

The really great thing about cats is their endless variety. One can pick a cat to fit almost any kind of decor, income, personality, mood. But under the fur, there still lies, essentially unchanged, one of the world's free souls.

A piece of paper from the outside world is as thin as the shell of a snowbird's egg.

Kenojuak Ashevak
Kenojuak Ashevak
Writing gave me a second chance - not to change things, but to savor them. That is a great gift.

Doris McCarthy
Doris McCarthy
My aim has always been modest; I wanted to transform the arranged marriage (of art and architecture) into a love match.

Do not think me fussy when I specify tidiness. It is essential... In printing, remember that cleanliness and order wait upon success.

Providence The will of God acting together with human will. But he respects our will absolutely. He does not force. Love never forces. It only invites.... There is a war between good and

Paintings may not have nearly the power to convert people that the printed or spoken word has, but each man has his part to play in the human and divine drama - some persons just a few lines, others whole pages. To refuse to play one's role at all is not the answer. It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.

I find that as I get into a painting I have high hopes, then little by little I begin to see that it is not going to be the masterpiece I thought it would be, and I start putting my hopes into the next work.

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

As for herself, every morning on waking she gives thanks to the God she doesn't disbelieve in. Although she can't credit him with saving her, she needs this outlet for her gratitude.