Artist Quotes - Page 27

How awful that the artist has become nothing but the after-dinner mint of society.

The artist's job is to be a witness to his time in history.

Nobody has a perfect life. What you see on the screen is the best of the artist.

Shadow is a colour as light is, but less brilliant; light and shadow are only the relation of two tones.

If the affairs of the world were put in the hands of the screwball artists, it couldn’t be in a worse state than it is now !

You have to be a little patient if you're an artist. People don't always get you the first time.

I just close my eyes and act like I'm a 3-year-old. I try to get as close to a childlike level as possible because we were all artists back then. So you just close your eyes and think back to when you were as young as you can remember and had the least barriers to your creativity.

An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.

An artist is an explorer. He has to begin by self-discovery and by observation of his own procedure. After that he must not feel under any constraint.

If I were still stupider than I am, I should think myself at the apex of my career; yet I know how much I still lack, to reach perfection; I see it the more clearly now that I live only among first-rank artists and know what each one of them lacks.

'Think in simples' as my old master used to say - meaning to reduce the whole to its parts in simplest terms, getting back to first principles.

The artist must be like a heart surgeon. He must approach something with sympathy, but with a sort of coldness and work and work until he finds some kind of perfection in his work. You can't have blood splashing all over the place. Things must be done very cleanly.

My life is as an artist, not an entertainer. I don't consider myself an entertainer, but I can do that thing when I want to

I pay homage and respect to Bobby Womack [for Black History Month] knowing that he passed last year... Him being one of those artists that I have really sampled so much and just been so inspired by... You know, he is the original ‘soul man.’

I feel a responsibility to my backyard. I want it to be taken care of and protected.

The young artist of today need no longer say 'I am a painter,' or 'a poet,' or 'a dancer.' He is simply an 'artist.' All of life will be open to him.

I can draw really well. And I like to paint. I'm a bit of an artist.

It was special with me being from Memphis and knowing the history of the venue, knowing all of the artists who performed in the Orpheum before me. Even having the idea to approach it was ambitious on my part, but I thought they would turn me down at first.

What is an artist but a workman who is determined that, whatever else happens, his work shall be excellent?

The work never matches the dream of perfection the artist has to start with.

If you're an artist, the problem is to make a picture work whether you are happy or not.

A win by an unsound combination, however showy, fills me with artistic horror

An artist has to train his responses more than other people do. He has to be as disciplined as a mathematician. Discipline is not a restriction but an aid to freedom. It prepares an artist to choose his own limitations.

You wonder what I am doing? Well, so do I, in truth. Days seem to dawn, suns to shine, evenings to follow, and then I sleep. What I have done, what I am doing, what I am going to do, puzzle and bewilder me. Have you ever been a leaf and fallen from your tree in autumn and been really puzzled about it? That’s the feeling.

It's very important for any artist, in any field, to take their own temperature and check out their own energy, and see what it is they ought to be doing to keep the energy up. Because if your energy is not up, you're going to come up with some really dreary piece of work that no one's going to enjoy.