Artist Quotes - Page 25

In the early days of my carer as an actor, I shared what was then the prevailing attitude of Negro performers :;that the content and form of a play or a film scenario was of little importance to us. What mattered was was the opportunity, which came so seldom to our folks ... Later I came to understand that the Negro artist could not view the matter simply in terms of of his individual interests, and that he had a responsibility to his people who rightfully resented the traditional stereotyped portrayals of Negros on stage and screen.

An artist does his most difficult work when he steps back from the blank canvas and thinks about what he is going to create.

I probably have fundamentally antisocial tendencies. I never took one extracurricular activity. I just failed utterly at that level. Part of me still rebels against that.

The artist is a spectator, indifferent or impassioned, at the birth of his work, and observes the phases of its development.

Creativity sometimes needs the protection of darkness, of being ignored. That is very obvious in the natural tendency many artists and writers have not to show their paintings or writings before they are finished.

I think perhaps I've learned to be myself. I have a theory that all artists who would be important - painters and writers - must learn to be themselves. It takes a very long time.

Women are expected to identify gender as a starting point. Ethnicities are expected to identify that as a location. Is it ever possible for the artist to imagine a state of absolute freedom? That was my call to arms.

I paint all the time. Each night I wrestle, I paint my face because I am an artist. It's kind of all coming together where I am able to do everything I really love to do and need in my life.

If you're not operating on an instinctive level, you're not an artist.... Reason over emotion is bullshit, absolute bullshit... We suffocate ourselves in rules. I find fantasy liberating.

I'm hoping to make a new thing for the world that remains in the mind like a new species of living thing.

Painting picture by picture, I followed the impressions my eye took in at heightened moments. I painted only memories, adding nothing, no details that I did not see. Hence the simplicity of the paintings, their emptiness.

Like all artists, I want to cheat death a little and contribute something to the next generation.

Not all of us are painters but we are all artists. Each time we fit things together we are creating - whether it is to make a loaf of bread, a child, a day.

The mother is the one supreme asset of national life; she is more important by far than the successful statesman, or business man, or artist, or scientist.

Only the brave should teach....Teaching is a vocation. It is as sacred as priesthood; as innate a desire, as inescapable as the genius which compels a great artist. If he has not the concern for humanity, the love of living creatures, the vision of the priest and the artist, he must not teach.

Most people think an artist tries to be original, but originality is the last thing that develops in the artist.

An artist who lacks the power of self-criticism accomplishes but little. It is good if your work stands higher than your own opinion of it; bad if it is on the same level. But it is a great disaster if your work stands lower than your judgment of it.

Those are miracles that no merely human brain can work. The artist is merely the sound conduct of a Force that dictates to him what he should do.

I ain't a new artist, I'm good in the studio, I don't need somebody to hold my hand in the studio. I don't even really want them all over my album or anything like that.

Less is only more where more is no good.

Artists are just children who refuse to put down their crayons.

Artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach.

Music has given a voice to many generations, and I think we, as artists, can be a part of creating a better world.

Mary is God's masterpiece. Have you ever walked into a museum where an artist was displaying his work? Can you imagine him being offended if you were viewing what he considered to be his masterpiece? Would he resent your looking at that instead of at him? 'Hey, you should be looking at me!' Rather, the artist would receive honor because of the attention you were giving his work. And Mary is God's work, from beginning to end.

The big tradition, I think, is unity. And I have that in mind; and with that, you know, you could break all the traditions- all the other so-called rules, because they are stylistic.. and most are not true. As long as the marks are related to one another, there is unity. Unity in the work itself depends on unity of the artist's vision.