Artist Quotes and Sayings


An artist is someone who produces things that people don’t need to have but that he - for some reason - thinks it would be a good idea to give them.
Andy Warhol

An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one.
Charles Horton Cooley

A painter should not paint what he sees, but what will be seen.
Paul Valery

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.
Henry Ward Beecher

An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world.
George Santayana

The artist does not see things as they are, but as he is.
Alfred Tonnelle

God and other artists are always a little obscure.
Oscar Wilde

Poets and painters are outside the class system, or rather they constitute a special class of their own, like the circus people and the gipsies.
Gerald Brenan

The artist’s world is limitless. It can be found anywhere, far from where he lives or a few feet away. It is always on his doorstep.
Paul Strand

An amateur is an artist who supports himself with outside jobs which enable him to paint. A professional is someone whose wife works to enable him to paint.
Ben Shahn

The artist who makes himself accessible is self-destructive.
Howard Barker

An artist’s career always begins tomorrow.
James McNeill Whistler

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.
Pablo Picasso

An artist never really finishes his work; he merely abandons it.
Paul Valery

A subject that is beautiful in itself gives no suggestion to the artist. It lacks imperfection.
Oscar Wilde

There’s no retirement for an artist, it’s your way of living so there’s no end to it.
Henry Moore

What is an artist? For every thousand people there’s nine hundred doing the work, ninety doing well, nine doing good, and one lucky bastard who’s the artist.
Tom Stoppard

I do not paint a portrait to look like the subject, rather does the person grow to look like his portrait.
Salvador Dali

A great artist is always before his time or behind it.
George Moore

The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.
T.S. Eliot

The artist need not know very much; best of all let him work instinctively and paint as naturally as he breathes or walks.
Emil Nolde

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.
Oscar Wilde

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.
Oscar Wilde

An artist must be careful not to throw his ideas out with the trash.
Dena Groquet

An artist’s instinct is more refined than the typical mortal’s.
Holden Rinehart

An artist cannot talk about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.
Jean Cocteau

We live in an age where the artist is forgotten. He is a researcher. I see myself that way.
David Hockney

It is frequently the tragedy of the great artist, as it is of the great scientist, that he frightens the ordinary man.
Loren Eiseley

When painting, an artist must take care not to trap his soul in the canvas.
Dena Groquet

I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.
Pablo Picasso

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2 More Quotes on “Artist Quotes and Sayings”

    The artist is nothing without the gift,
    but the gift is nothing without work.
    Emile Zola

    Submitted By: Jackson

    The man who never in his mind and thoughts travel’d to heaven is no artist.
    William Blake

    Submitted By: Malika

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