Creativity & Inspiration Art quotes

Art quotes for artists

1. “Art enables us to findourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” – Thomas Merton
2. “Creativity takes courage.” – Henri Matisse
3. “Every artist was first an amateur.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
4. “The desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul.” – Dieter F. Uchtdorf
5. “Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” – Edgar Degas
6. “Imagination is the beginning of creation.” – George Bernard Shaw
7. “To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow.” – Kurt Vonnegut
8. “The world always seems brighter when you’ve just made something that wasn’t there before.” – Neil Gaiman
9. “Creativity is intelligence having fun.” – Albert Einstein
10. “The chief enemy of creativity is good sense.” – Pablo Picasso
11. “You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” – Maya Angelou
12. “Creativity is contagious, pass it on.” – Albert Einstein
13. “Everything you can imagine is real.” – Pablo Picasso
14. “To be an artist is to believe in life.” – Henry Moore
15. “Art is the soul of life made visible.” – Unknown

Purpose & Meaning of Art (12 quotes)

16. “Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.” – Cesar A. Cruz
17. “The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.” – Pablo Picasso
18. “Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.” – Pablo Picasso
19. “Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.” – Oscar Wilde
20. “Art speaks where words are unable to explain.” – Threadless
21. “Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.” – George Bernard Shaw
22. “Art is to console those who are broken by life.” – Vincent van Gogh
23. “Art is the signature of civilizations.” – Beverly Sills
24. “Art is not a thing; it is a way.” – Elbert Hubbard
25. “The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.” – Aristotle
26. “Art is the proper task of life.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
27. “Art is the stored honey of the human soul.” – Theodore Dreiser

The Creative Process (13 quotes)

28. “Art is never finished, only abandoned.” – Leonardo da Vinci
29. “The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work.” – Émile Zola
30. “Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.” – Henry Ward Beecher
31. “I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
32. “Have no fear of perfection – you’ll never reach it.” – Salvador Dalí
33. “The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.” – Francis Bacon
34. “Art is the only way to run away without leaving home.” – Twyla Tharp
35. “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” – Pablo Picasso
36. “A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art.” – Paul Cézanne
37. “Painting is easy when you don’t know how, but very difficult when you do.” – Edgar Degas
38. “I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.” – Pablo Picasso
39. “Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth.” – John Ruskin
40. “Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.” – Pablo Picasso

Vision & Perspective (10 quotes)

41. “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.” – Pablo Picasso
42. “A picture is a poem without words.” – Horace Art quotes
43. “The painter has the universe in his mind and hands.” – Leonardo da Vinci
44. “The artist sees what others only catch a glimpse of.” – Leonardo da Vinci
45. “No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.” – Oscar Wilde
46. “Art is the elimination of the unnecessary.” – Pablo Picasso
47. “There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who transform a yellow spot into the sun.” – Pablo Picasso
48. “I dream my painting and I paint my dream.” – Vincent van Gogh
49. “Art is not freedom from discipline, but disciplined freedom.” – John F. Kennedy
50. “The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity.” – Alberto Giacometti

Passion & Dedication (10 quotes)

51. “Art must be an expression of love or it is nothing.” – Marc Chagall
52. “Great art picks up where nature ends.” – Marc Chagall
53. “Life is art. Art is life. I never separate it.” – Ai Weiwei
54. “Art is the journey of a free soul.” – Alev Oguz
55. “In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
56. “Art is something that makes you breathe with a different kind of happiness.” – Anni Albers
57. “An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one.” – Charles Horton Cooley
58. “The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.” – Michelangelo
59. “Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.” – André Gide
60. “Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self.” – Alfred North Whitehead

Color & Design Art quotes (8 quotes)

61. “Color is my daylong obsession, joy, and torment.” – Claude Monet
62. “Colors are the smiles of nature.” – Leigh Hunt
63. “There are always flowers for those who want to see them.” – Henri Matisse
64. “Mere color, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways.” – Oscar Wilde
65. “Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad.” – Salvador Dalí
66. “Art is a line around your thoughts.” – Gustav Klimt
67. “Color! What a deep and mysterious language, the language of dreams.” – Paul Gauguin
68. “All colors are the friends of their neighbors and the lovers of their opposites.” – Marc Chagall

Expression & Communication Art quotes (10 quotes)

69. “Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist.” – René Magritte
70. “Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.” – Leonardo da Vinci
71. “If I could say it in words there would be no reason to paint.” – Edward Hopper
72. “All art is but imitation of nature.” – Lucius Annaeus Seneca
73. “Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.” – Oscar Wilde
74. “Art is either plagiarism or revolution.” – Paul Gauguin
75. “To draw, you must close your eyes and sing.” – Pablo Picasso
76. “Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.” – Pablo Picasso
77. “The role of the artist is to ask questions, not answer them.” – Anton Chekhov
78. “Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is.” – Jackson Pollock
79. “Art doesn’t have to be pretty. It has to be meaningful.” – Duane Hanson
80. “The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

Modern & Contemporary Perspectives (10 quotes)

81. “Art is anything you can get away with.” – Marshall McLuhan
82. “Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.” – Scott Adams
83. “Good artists copy, great artists steal.” – Pablo Picasso
84. “Art should be something that liberates your soul, provokes the imagination and encourages people to go further.” – Keith Haring
85. “Art is the most beautiful of all lies.” – Claude Debussy
86. “The only time I feel alive is when I’m painting.” – Vincent van Gogh
87. “Art is magic delivered from the lie of being truth.” – Theodor Adorno
88. “If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.” – John F. Kennedy
89. “Art is the concrete representation of our most subtle feelings.” – Agnes Martin
90. “An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.” – James Whistler

Beauty, Truth & Philosophy (10 quotes)

91. “Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious.” – Oscar Wilde
92. “Beauty in art is often nothing but ugliness subdued.” – Jean Rostand
93. “Art and love are the same thing: It’s the process of seeing yourself in things that are not you.” – Chuck Klosterman
94. “The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person.” – Abraham Lincoln
95. “Art is a revolt against fate.” – André Malraux
96. “Art is the triumph over chaos.” – John Cheever
97. “The principles of true art is not to portray, but to evoke.” – Jerzy Kosinski
98. “Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.” – Alfred North Whitehead
99. “Art is the unceasing effort to compete with the beauty of flowers – and never succeeding.” – Gian Carlo Menotti
100. “All art is autobiographical. The pearl is the oyster’s autobiography.” – Federico Fellini