Artist Quotes - Page 30

A good artist lets his intuition lead him wherever it wants.

We usually evaluate creative process in terms of how much feeling or thinking was behind the work or how well the work was done. Isn't there any other way of appreciating the process? What if the standard of excellence was how fully present the artist was during the process?

Computers don't create computer animation any more than a pencil creates pencil animation. What creates computer animation is the artist.

A great artist... must be shaken by the naked truths that will not be comforted. This divine discontent, this disequilibrium, this state of inner tension is the source of artistic energy.

Artists say that paintings are never done. I sort of feel the same way about music. I would never say something is perfect. There are performances that can generate a lot of emotion in me when I hear them, but I can't say if anything is perfect.

Victor Serge died in exile and obscurity, apparently no more than a splinter of a splinter in the Marxist movement. But with the passage of the years, he looms up as one of the great moral figures of our time, an artist of such integrity and a revolutionary of such purity as to overshadow those who achieved fame and power. His failure was his success. I know of no participant in Russia's revolution and Spain's agonies who more deserves the attention of our concerned youth.

All art is autobiographical.

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.

The only honest and generous thing for me to do is to give people myself. That's all I've got as an artist, so I want to do that in an unflinching way.

A good martial artist does not become tense, but ready. Not thinking, yet not dreaming. Ready for whatever may come. When the opponent expands, I contract; and when he contracts, I expand. And when there is an opportunity, "I" do not hit, "it" hits all by itself.

The little dissatisfaction which every artist feels at the completion of a work forms the germ of a new work.

A true artist, in my mind, is willing to fail sometimes, because if you're not brave enough to say yes and follow your gut, it's never going to be good.

Awakening your spiritual side is really what artists do. When you hit a groove, it's not you; it's the spirit world.

Its very important to me to be respected by true talented artists and great minds than by the masses who need to be told how to think. Its more important for me to do things that are spiritually rewarding because that wealth is what makes me feel alive. I do not touch projects that do not yield personal fulfillment, or put me in a field with talent that is over-measured. You wont find me where there is no Truth. And Im not one to jump on any bandwagons or join a gold rush without a purpose. Id rather create my own projects and grow my own fields.

As an artist, everybody has the opportunity to celebrate and speak their truth.

As a street artist, I'm used to sharing my stuff with the public. It's a communal experience. I've learned not to be so precious, but rather to enjoy the process.

Practically all great artists accept the influence of others. But... the artist with vision sees his material, chooses, changes, and by integrating what he has learned with his own experiences, finally molds something distinctly personnel.

I don't know what makes someone hip. The goal is artist achievement and the best work we can do with no limitation.

If you paint the leaf on a tree without using a model, your imagination will only supply you with a few leaves; but Nature offers you millions, all on the same tree. No two leaves are exactly the same. The artist who paints only what is in his mind must very soon repeat himself.

Artists are like messengers. A song is authored by you, but its interpretation is owned by other people. And you have no control over that.

What the artist is always looking for is the mode of existence in which soul and body are one and indivisible: in which the outward is expressive of the inward: in which form reveals.

With the pride of the artist, you must blow against the walls of every power that exists the small trumpet of your defiance.

Arguably, no artist grows up: If he sheds the perceptions of childhood, he ceases being an artist.

I love power. But it is as an artist that I love it. I love it as a musician loves his violin, to draw out its sounds and chords and harmonies.

The poet, the artist, the sleuth, whoever sharpens our perception tends to antisocial; rarely 'well adjusted,' he cannot go along with currents and trends.