Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself.
Never let anyone define what you are capable of by using parameters that don’t apply to you.
If you're overwhelmed by the size of a problem, break it down into smaller pieces.
Never let anyone define what you are capable of by using parameters that don't apply to you. Inspiration is for amateurs, the rest of us just show up and get to work. Every great idea I've ever had grew out of work itself. Sign onto a process and see where it takes you. You don't have to invent the wheel everyday. Today you will do what you did yesterday, tomorrow you will do what you did today. Eventually, you will get somewhere.
A face is a road map of someone's life. Without any need to amplify that or draw attention to it, there's a great deal that's communicated about who this person is and what their life experiences have been.
While photography is the easiest medium in which to be competent, it is the hardest in which to develop an idiosyncratic personal vision.
Painting is the frozen evidence of a performance.
The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work.
Ease is the enemy of the artist. When things get too easy, you're in trouble.
Inspiration is for amateurs.
In life you can be dealt a winning hand of cards and you can find a way to lose, and you can be dealt a losing hand and find a way to win. True in art and true in life: you pretty much make your own destiny. If you are by nature an optimistic person, which I am, that puts you in a better position to be lucky in life.
All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you.If you're sitting around trying to dream up a great idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens.But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction.
Inspiration is for amateurs - the rest of us just show up and get to work. And the belief that things will grow out of the activity itself and that you will - through work - bump into other possibilities and kick open other doors that you would never have dreamt of if you were just sitting around looking for a great "art idea."
Art saved my life in two ways. It made me feel special, because I could do things my friends couldn't, but it also gave me a way to demonstrate to my teacher that, despite the fact that I couldn't write a paper or do math, I was paying attention.
The thing that interests me about photography, and why it's different from all other media, is that it's the only medium in which there is even the possibility of an accidental masterpiece.
Those who are waiting for an epiphany to strike may wait forever. The artist simply goes to work, making art, both good and not so good.
Painting is the most magical of mediums. The transcendence is truly amazing to me every time I go to a museum and I see how somebody figured another way to rub colored dirt on a flat surface and make space where there is no space or make you think of a life experience.
Having a routine, knowing what to do, gives me a sense of freedom and keeps me from going crazy. It's calming.
All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself.
I only have so much time and energy and money, and I'm going to put it into my work.
It's like a magic well. You think you know everything about [a] photograph, you think you've gotten everything out of it, and all of a sudden I see things in it I'd never seen before.
Neurologically, I'm a quadriplegic, so virtually everything about my work has been driven by my learning disabilities, which are quite severe, and my lack of facial recognition, which I'm sure is what drove me to paint portraits in the first place.
Inspiration is highly overrated. If you sit around and wait for the clouds to part, it's not liable to ever happen. More often than not, work is salvation.
Inspiration is for amateurs. professionals work everyday. Personally the best inspiration is a deadline.
You don't have to reinvent the wheel every day. Today you will do what you did yesterday, and tomorrow you will do what you did today. Eventually you will get somewhere.
