Quotes About Art

Art should exhilarate, and throw down the walls of circumstance on every side, awakening in the beholder the same sense of universal relation and power which the work evinced in the artist.

In my work, I explore my own Catholic obsessions.

I am afraid that as evangelicals, we think that a work of art only has value if we reduce it to a tract.

A lot of my work is about sales. And it was about being independent from the art market.

The only pictorial matter that is of interest to me is the matter and sentiments brought about by the work itself.

The sculptor does not work for the anatomist, but for the common observer of life and nature.

The lucky few who can be involved in creative work of any sort will be the true elite of mankind, for they alone will do more than serve a machine.

Any work that is really great hovers between terrific and terrible.

I work with whatever mediums seems best suited to evoking the sorts of thoughts and emotions I am interested in playing with.

Computers are another tool for the creative artist - just as a flat or filbert brush is. But there was a time when I left a jar of medium open by my work station for that painterly smell.

Any actor will tell you, as soon as your ego and your vanity come into the mix, it destroys your work. Completely destroys it.

For almost anyone who chooses to be a writer, since so very few writers are able to learn a living from their work that is equivalent to the living earned by the average dentist or accountant.

Meeting and talking to the artist adds a special element to collecting contemporary art that makes the work an irreplaceable treasure rather than just another possession.

The work of art is an ostentatiously improbable occurrence.

I see no reason for calling my work poetry except that there is no other category in which to put it.

It makes no difference whether a work is naturalistic or abstract; every visual expression follows the same fundamental laws

My father didn't think being an artist was a respectable or worthy goal for a man. He hoped I would see my way to more serious work and would find myself turning towards medicine, law, or business.

It hinders the creative work of the mind if the intellect examines too closely the ideas as they pour in.

In real life, you just work for the ordinary self, but in the front of audience you become the superself. That's a completely different thing.

Style is as much under the words as in the words. It is as much the soul as it is the flesh of a work.

I think it's bad to talk about one's present work, for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It discharges the tension.

My opinion is that the best thing would be to work on till art lovers feel drawn toward it of their own accord, instead of having to praise or to explain it.

The person viewing your work has no idea what the scene really looked like, nor do they care.

I want people to be drawn into the space of the work. And a lot of people are like me in that they have relatively short attention spans. So I shoot for the window of opportunity.