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


Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. ~Scott Adams


Painting is just another way of keeping a diary. ~Pablo Picasso


Art is the only way to run away without leaving home. ~Twyla Tharp


The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. ~William Faulkner


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


Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one. ~Stella Adler


Painting is silent poetry. ~Plutarch, Moralia: How to Study Poetry


Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen. ~Leonardo da Vinci


It has been said that art is a tryst, for in the joy of it maker and beholder meet. ~Kojiro Tomita


Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in. ~Amy Lowell


To send light into the darkness of men's hearts - such is the duty of the artist. ~Schumann


We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies. ~Pablo Picasso


I don't paint things. I only paint the difference between things. ~Henri Matisse


The artist uses the talent he has, wishing he had more talent. The talent uses the artist it has, wishing it had more artist. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


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


Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression. ~Isaac Bashevis Singer


To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art; men can only make us feel small in the wrong way. ~E.M. Forster, Two Cheers for Democracy, 1951


Art is the stored honey of the human soul, gathered on wings of misery and travail. ~Theodore Dreiser, Life, Art, and America, 1917


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


All art requires courage. ~Anne Tucker


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


Painting is easy when you don't know how, but very difficult when you do. ~Edgar Degas


It is a mistake for a sculptor or a painter to speak or write very often about his job. It releases tension needed for his work. ~Henry Moore


Pictures must not be too picturesque. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better. ~André Gide


Anyone who says you can't see a thought simply doesn't know art. ~Wynetka Ann Reynolds


But that's what being an artist is - feeling crummy before everyone else feels crummy. ~The New Yorker


Very few people possess true artistic ability. It is therefore both unseemly and unproductive to irritate the situation by making an effort. If you have a burning, restless urge to write or paint, simply eat something sweet and the feeling will pass. ~Fran Lebowitz


Great art picks up where nature ends. ~Marc Chagall


When my daughter was about seven years old, she asked me one day what I did at work. I told her I worked at the college - that my job was to teach people how to draw. She stared at me, incredulous, and said, "You mean they forget?" ~Howard Ikemoto


Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame. ~G.K. Chesterton


What art offers is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit. ~John Updike


The artist is the opposite of the politically minded individual, the opposite of the reformer, the opposite of the idealist. The artist does not tinker with the universe, he recreates it out of his own experience and understanding of life. ~Henry Miller


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


Let me ask you something, what is not art? ~Author Unknown


The painter puts brush to canvas, and the poet puts pen to paper. The poet has the easier task, for his pen does not alter his rhyme. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


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


The buttocks are the most aesthetically pleasing part of the body because they are non-functional. Although they conceal an essential orifice, these pointless globes are as near as the human form can ever come to abstract art. ~Kenneth Tynan


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


For me, painting is a way to forget life. It is a cry in the night, a strangled laugh. ~Georges Rouault


Everything in creation has its appointed painter or poet and remains in bondage like the princess in the fairy tale 'til its appropriate liberator comes to set it free. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality. ~T.S. Eliot, Tradition and the Individual Talent, 1919


There is no surer method of evading the world than by following Art, and no surer method of linking oneself to it than by Art. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


Art is... a question mark in the minds of those who want to know what's happening. ~Aaron Howard