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1
One of art’s functions is to recall that which is absent -
whether it is history, or the unconscious, or form, or social justice.
LUCY LIPPARD
2
I am in the world/to change the world.
KATHE KOLLWITZ
3
I make form out of material but I also make material out of form.
RICHARD TUTTLE
4
The art just wants to be made. It pushes through the vehicle (the
person) into manifest form.
VICKI NOBLE
5
The artist is a receptacle for emotions, regardless of whether they
spring from heaven, from earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing
face, or from a spider’s web.
PABLO PICASSO
6
Creation is interested in the unborn. The painter is like a gardener;
handling the seeds, not producing them or making them perfect.
MICHELL CASSOU
7
Art does not reproduce the invisible; rather, it makes visible.
PAUL KLEE
8
It is only the pure idea that has meaning. Everything else has everything
else.
BARNETT NEWMAN
9
We are in the midst of reality responding with joy.
AGNES MARTIN
10
If you’re not playful you’re not alive, and if a picture
isn’t alive it’s not real.
DAVID HOCKNEY
11
Mirrors should reflect a little before throwing back images.
JEAN COCTEAU
12
Inspiration is for amateurs. We just need to show up and go to work.
CHUCK CLOSE
13
When you start a painting, it is somewhat outside you. At the conclusion,
you seem to move inside the painting.
FERNANDO BOTERO
14
My new work is a very Canadian form of self-portrait - me describing
myself in terms of what I am not.
GREG CURNOE
15
To become truly immortal, a work of art must escape all human limits
- logic and common sense will only interfere. But once these barriers
are broken, it will enter the regions of visions and dreams.
GIORGIO DE CHIRICO
16
We are so captivated by and entangled in our subjective consciousness
that we have forgotten the age-old fact that God speaks chiefly
through dreams and visions.
CARL JUNG
17
Inside somewhere, we’re all Indian. So when I befriend you,
I’m trying to bring out that Indianness in you to make you
think that everything is sacred.
NORVAL MORRISSEAU
18
Creative breakthroughs are experiential. They don’t come from
intellectual analysis.
LUCIA CAPACCHIONE
19
An essential portion of any artist’s labour is not creation
so much as invocation.
LEWIS HYDE
20
Art is prayer.
ZOSEPH ZINKER
21
All art, if you’re doing it right, is religious - at least
all art that interests me.
DOROTHEA ROCKBURNE
22
A real artist is nothing if not a working man and a damn hard one.
EDWARD WESTON
23
I have tried other paths, other meditations, but painting has been
my main pursuit, my best metaphor. It is real for me. It is my travel,
my history, my anthropology. It is my whale song, my past and future
mythology.
BILL RANE
24
It’s not an artist’s life that interesting, it’s
what they say about life.
PAUL STRAND
25
I find that I have painted my life - things happening in my life
- without knowing.
GEORGIA O’KEEFE
26
In a general sense, all artists are shamans, insomuch as they are
channelling images or concepts on behalf of the collective.
VICKI NOBLE
27
What is absurd, the work or the world I point to?
AGANETHA DYCK
28
Picture-making is power: intimate, sharp and beautiful. Problem
is, it eats up years, and personal sacrifice does not engender the
kind of resilience and longevity we need to become real artists.
Sleepless nights, hangovers, shattered nerves? Yes. Mashed fingers
and sore shoulders? Sure. A life without marriage or children? It
sucks. But these are the choices we have to make.
SALLY ECKHOFF
29
Painters are essentially hasslers.......it’s a responsibility
of the painter to hassle people’s spirit, soul and their anxiety
for material gain.
MILLY RISTVEDT
30
The artist should be exemplary.
MICHAEL SNOW
31
What can I do? Art grows out of me like toenails. I have to cut
it off and then it grows again.
HANS ARP
32
Properly understood as a question of focus, unconditional love is
the creative process.
PETER ROGERS
33
All art comes from love.
DAVID HOCKNEY
34
Some day all art will be light.
HENRI MATISSE
35
A good statue can be rolled downhill without damage.
MICHELANGELO
36
Art is museums. Art is curators. Art is committees. Art is product.
Art is wheeling and dealing. Art is manipulation. Art is status.
Art is hierarchy. Art is social climbing. Art is not done by artists.
Art is not personal expression. Art has nothing to do with a person
in silent communion with his/her soul, psyche, need, wish, dream,
desire, hope, and all good things.
ALVIN BALKIND
37
Painting is art, and art is not vague production, transitory and
isolated, but a power which must be directed to the improvement
and refinement of the human soul.
WASSILY KANDINSKY
38
You have to have time to be sorry for yourself to be a good Abstract
Expressionist.
ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG
39
Abstract Expressionism was invented by New York drunks.
JONI MITCHELL
40
There are some disabling myths about what art is, how to do it,
what is good art, and what art is for, that have gagged generations,
depriving them of significant and natural means of expression. This
is a terrible loss and an unnecessary one.
PETER LONDON
41
I look at art, question it, establish a dialogue with it. And I
take a long time with the artist because I am thinking in terms
of fifteen or twenty years. I am serious about art because it recharges
me, and gives me a better understanding of society, people. Because
art is salvation, a great thing, like religion and law. Because
art is the best, most challenging medicine for the mind.
CARMEN LAMANNA
42
An audience shouldn’t necessarily be anticipated. In fact,
art is probably more inspired without a goal.
NICOLA HEINDL
43
In an increasingly technological society the division between experience
and ritual grows more vast. We have seen the growth of offeratory
expressions in the institutions of the art community........if we
look further we discern that the practitioners of such “ritual
art” are most often women.”
AMALIA MESA-BAINS
44
We can make art, letting the voice of the goddess - the oracle -
speak through us in healing words and images.
DOROTHY MACLEAN
45
Can art heal? Certainly the art-making process can heal the artist.
We have ample evidence. But can art heal the viewer? Can art change
the world? I don’t think it is merely a matter of belief -
the spiritual in art is beyond belief. It can be tested; it will
be tested - not in the laboratory but in the theatre of the human
soul. We should not abandon other ways of working for positive change,
but art can help us in these; art can offer direct experience, and
above all, hope. Artists are our new shamans, and we should listen
to what they have to say.
JOHN PERREAULT
46
As soon as aesthetics take over, the healing benefits of art are
lost.
CARL JUNG
47
I count every minute wasted which is not devoted to my art.
EMILE RENARD
48
The important thing is to create. Nothing else matters - creation
is all.
PABLO PICASSO
49
Invention is the natural outcome of creative thinking.
SARK
50
I am going to keep on doing drawings until they tell me to stop.
If no one tells me to stop, I shall make them even after I am dead.
PITSEOLAK
51
Painting makes me happy and it will soon save the world.
LAURA OWENS
52
Art is neither a profession or a hobby. Art is a way of being.
FREDERICK FRANCK
53
I am closer to the work than to anything on earth. That’s
the marriage.
LOUISE NEVELSON
54
Art is the desire to be different, the desire to be elsewhere.
NIETZSCHE
55
Maybe I can’t change the world, but I can create what I want
to look at.
LIZA LOU
56
You have to find your own direction and make your own world. Religion
has an agenda. Art does not. It has no rules, no morality, no ethics.
I like art where I feel the artist knows the rules and then breaks
them.
RICHARD TUTTLE
57
Understanding diminishes when a flux of images are reduced to a
single interpretation.
NICK BANTCOCK
58
According to one critic, my works looked like scraped billboards.
I went to look at billboards and decided that more billboards should
be scraped.
MARK TOBEY
59
Trust soul, trust image and trust your own gut.
PAT B. ALLEN
60
I have never avoided the influence of others.
HENRI MATISSE
61
There are no mistakes. What happens during the process of making
something is sacred and organic.
VICKI NOBLE
62
The most important quality of art is that it must be unique, never
normal. Your work must surprise. Both your viewer and yourself.
W.O. MITCHELL
63
Less is more.
MIES VAN DER ROHE
64
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the
proportion.
FRANCIS BACON
65
The artist has only to remain true to his vision and it will possess
his work in such a manner that it will resemble the work of no other
- for no two dreams are alike, and those who reach the heights have
all toiled up the steep mountains by a different route. To each
has been revealed a different panorama.
ALBERT PINKHAM RYDER
66
There are always flowers for those who want to see them.
HENRI MATISSE
67
Imagination connects us with the web of power and the spirit in
all things.
JOSE STEVENS
68
The only war that counts is the war against the imagination.
DIANE DE PRIMA
69
The imagination is our true self, and is in fact the living, creating
God within us.
STEPHEN NACHMANOVITCH
70
Which artist would not wish to dwell at the central organ of all
motion......from which all functions derive their life? In the womb
of nature, in the primal ground of creation, where the secret key
to all things lies hidden?
PAUL KLEE
71
Slowly I discovered the secret of my art consisted of a meditation
on nature.
HENRI MATISSE
72
Art is the proper task of life, it is life’s metaphysical
exercise.
NIETZSCHE
73
Painting and sculpture have ruined me.
MICHELANGELO
74
Your real duty is to save your dream.
MODIGLIANI
75
If you’re not doing something creative, you’re taking
up space.
ANONYMOUS
76
The first virtue of a painting is to be a feast for the eyes.
EUGENE DELACROIX
77
Don’t look at a picture close, it smells bad.
REMBRANDT
compiled by Pegi Eyers
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