Quotes about Art! 200+ Art Sayings to Inspire the Artist in You

Quotes about Art

  • “Art, Undeniably, is conductive to happiness.” —Unknown
  • “Painting is a means of self-enlightenment.” —John Olsen
  • “Art is never finished, only abandoned” —Leonardo Da Vinci
  • “Colour is my day-long obsession, joy and torment.” —Claude Monet
  • “Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.” —Pablo Picasso
  • “Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.” —Salvador Dali
  • “Don’t be an art critic, but paint, there lies salvation.” —Paul Cezanne
  • “There is no must in art because art is free.” —Wassily Kandinsky
  • “I would rather die of passion than of boredom.” —Vincent van Gogh
  • “Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master.” —Leonardo da Vinci
  • “Art is the only way to run away without leaving home.” —Twyla Tharp
  • “An artist never really finishes his work; he merely abandons it.” —Paul Valéry
  • “I wish they would only take me as I am.” —Vincent Van Gogh
  • “A great artist is always before his time or behind it.” —George Moore
  • “The position of the artist is humble. He is essentially a channel.” —Piet Mondrian
  • “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free” —Michelangelo
  • “A painting is never finished – it simply stops in interesting places.” —Paul Gardner
  • “One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself.” —Leonardo da Vinci
  • “Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.” —Vincent Van Gogh
  • “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” —Henry David Thoreau

Famous Quotes about Art

  • “The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.” —Jean-Jacques Rousseau
  • “If I could say it in words there would be no reason to paint.” —Edward Hopper
  • “They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.” —Andy Warhol
  • “Painting is easy when you don’t know how, but very difficult when you do.” —Edgar Degas
  • “I am seeking. I am striving. I am in it with all my heart.” —Vincent van Gogh
  • “The main thing is to be moved, to love, to hope, to tremble, to live.” —Auguste Rodin
  • “In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • “If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing.” —Marc Chagall
  • “You come to nature with all her theories, and she knocks them all flat.” —Pierre Auguste Renoir
  • “If you always do what you always did – you’ll always get what you always got.” —Unknown
  • “The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.” —Aristotle
  • “To send light into the darkness of men’s hearts – such is the duty of the artist.” —Schumann
  • “The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real.” —Lucian Freud
  • “If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all.” —Michelangelo
  • “There’s no retirement for an artist, it’s your way of living so there’s no end to it.” —Henry Moore
  • “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” —Pablo Picasso
  • “The object isn’t to make art, it’s to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.” —Robert Henri
  • “Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.” —Andre Gide
  • “The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity.” —Alberto Giacometti
  • “The holy grail is to spend less time making the picture than it takes people to look at it.” —Banksy
  • “The emotions are sometimes so strong that I work without knowing it. The strokes come like speech.” —Vincent Van Gogh
  • “If a man devotes himself to art, much evil is avoided that happens otherwise if one is idle.” —Albrecht Durer
  • “The emotions are sometimes so strong that I work without knowing it. The strokes come like speech.” —Vincent Van Gogh
  • “Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.” —Henry Ward Beecher
  • “I want to touch people with my art. I want them to say ‘he feels deeply, he feels tenderly.’” —Vincent Van Gogh
  • “Love always brings difficulties, that is true, but the good side of it is that it gives energy.” —Vincent Van Gogh
  • “Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing.” —Georgia O’Keeffe
  • “Nature is not only all that is visible to the eye.. it also includes the inner pictures of the soul.” —Edvard Munch
  • “No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.” —Oscar Wilde
  • “Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.” —Leonardo da Vinci
  • “The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.” —Robert Hughes
  • “Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” —Dr Suess
  • “To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it.” —Kurt Vonnegut
  • “I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way–things I had no words for.” —Georgia O’Keeffe
  • “As practice makes perfect, I cannot but make progress; each drawing one makes, each study one paints, is a step forward.” —Vincent van Gogh
  • “I paint for myself. I don’t know how to do anything else, anyway. Also I have to earn my living, and occupy myself.” —Francis Bacon
  • “If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, will answer you: I am here to live out loud.” —Émile Zola
  • “The artist’s world is limitless. It can be found anywhere, far from where he lives or a few feet away. It is always on his doorstep.” —Paul Strand
  • “There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot, but there are others who, thanks to their art and intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.” —Pablo Picasso
  • “What moves men of genius, or rather what inspires their work, is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is still not enough.” —Eugene Delacroix
  • “If I were called upon to define briefly the word Art, I should call it the reproduction of what the senses perceive in nature, seen through the veil of the soul.” —Paul Cezanne
  • “The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider’s web.” —Pablo Picasso
  • “Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” —Andy Warhol
  • “It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to, the feeling for the things themselves, for reality, is more important than the feeling for pictures.” —Vincent Van Gogh
  • “It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academicism. There is no such thing as good painting about nothing.” —Mark Rothko
  • “In our time there are many artists who do something because it is new; they see their value and their justification in this newness. They are deceiving themselves; novelty is seldom the essential. This has to do with one thing only; making a subject better from its intrinsic nature.” —Henri de Toulouse Lautrec

Quotes about Art and Life

  • “To be an artist is to believe in life.” —Henry Moore
  • “Life obliges me to do something, so I paint.” —Rene Magritte
  • “Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” —Pablo Picasso
  • “Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.” —John W. Gardner
  • “Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one.” —Stella Adler
  • “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.” —Pablo Picasso
  • “For me, painting is a way to forget life. It is a cry in the night, a strangled laugh.” —Georges Rouault
  • “Only an artist can interpret the meaning of life.” —Novalis
  • “Real artists take the misery and sadness of life and translate it into art.” —Josh Peck
  • “Great artists are people who find the way to be themselves in their art. Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike.” —Margot Fonteyn
  • “Every artist preserves deep within him a single source from which, throughout his lifetime, he draws what he is, and what he says. When the source dries up, the work withers and crumbles.” —Albert Camus

Inspirational Quotes about Art

  • “Great art picks up where nature ends.” —Marc Chagall
  • “To create one’s own world takes courage.” —Georgia O’Keeffe
  • “Do not fear mistakes – there are none.” —Miles David
  • “Have no fear of perfection, you’ll never reach it.” —Salvador Dali
  • “Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.” —Pablo Picasso
  • “Art is the stored honey of the human soul.” —Theodore Dreiser
  • “Art must be an expression of love or it is nothing.” —Marc Chagall
  • “Inspiration does exist but it must find you working.” —Pablo Picasso
  • “The only time I feel alive is when I’m painting.” —Vincent Van Gogh
  • “Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” —Edgar Degas
  • “An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one.” —Charles Horton Cooley
  • “A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art.” —Paul Cezanne
  • “An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.” —James McNeill Whistler

Quotes about Art and Creativity

  • “Creativity takes courage.” —Henri Matisse
  • “Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.” —Scott Adams
  • “I invent nothing, I rediscover.” —Auguste Rodin
  • “Every good painter paints what he is.” —Jackson Pollock
  • “A Good artist has less time than ideas.” —Martin Kippenberger
  • “I don’t say everything, but I paint everything.” —Pablo Picasso
  • “Everything has its beauty, but not everyone sees it.” —Andy Warhol
  • “Painting is the grandchild of nature. It is related to God.” —Rembrandt
  • “A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.” —Michelangelo
  • “The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.” —Francis Bacon
  • “I never paint dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality.” —Frida Kahlo
  • “I dream of painting and then I paint my dream.” —Vincent Van Gogh

Quotes about Art to Inspire the Artist in You

  • “Bad artists copy. Good artists steal.” —Pablo Picasso
  • “Great artists suffer for the people.” —Marvin Gaye
  • “Every artist writes his own autobiography.” —Havelock Ellis
  • “Every artist was first an amateur.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • “What gives the artist real prestige is his imitators.” —Igor Stravinsky
  • “To the artist there is never anything ugly in nature.” —Auguste Rodin
  • “Even a true artist does not always produce art.” — Carroll O’Connor
  • “The great artist is a slave to his ideals.” —Christian Nestell Bovee
  • “Artists are just children who refuse to put down their crayons.” —Al Hirschfeld
  • “A great artist is a great man in a great child.” —Victor Hugo
  • “The big artist keeps an eye on nature and steals her tools.” —Thomas Eakins
  • “An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world.” —George Santayana
  • “The artist must train not only his eye but also his soul.” —Wassily Kandinsky
  • “An artist is somebody who produces things that people don’t need to have.” —Andy Warhol
  • “A great artist can paint a great picture on a small canvas.” —Charles Dudley Warner
  • “True artists are almost the only men who do their work for pleasure.” —Auguste Rodin
  • “There is only one position for an artist anywhere; and that is upright.” —Dylan Thomas
  • “Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.” —Eugene Delacroix
  • “The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work.” —Emile Zola
  • “An artist is forced by others to paint out of his own free will.” —Willem de Kooning
  • “It’s good as an artist to always remember to see things in a new, weird way.” —Tim Burton
  • “The modern artist is working with space and time, and expressing his feelings rather than illustrating.” —Jackson Pollock
  • “To me, what makes an artist is a unique personality that they’re not afraid to let show.” —Blake Shelton
  • “Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.” —Henry Ward Beecher
  • “If you are born an artist, you have no choice but to fight to stay an artist.” —Lana Del Rey
  • “To be an artist you have to give up everything, including the desire to be a good artist.” —Jasper Johns
  • “An artist is always alone – if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness.” —Henry Miller
  • “You don’t know how much artists go through to make it look so easy. It’s all in the practice.” —Lauryn Hill
  • “An artist, under pain of oblivion, must have confidence in himself, and listen only to his real master: Nature.” —Pierre-Auguste Renoir
  • “No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.” —Oscar Wilde
  • “No artist is ahead of his time. He is his time; it is just that others are behind the times.” —Martha Graham
  • “In fact, most artists want to make things a bit more difficult for themselves as they go along, to challenge themselves.” —David Hockney
  • “The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.” —Agnes De Mille
  • “Being an artist is dragging your innermost feelings out, giving a piece of yourself, no matter in which art form, in which medium.” —Henry Rollins
  • “All great artists draw from the same resource: the human heart, which tells us that we are all more alike than we are unalike.” —Maya Angelou
  • “An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose.” —Langston Hughes
  • “As artists, we do the work that we do. Receiving an award or not receiving an award in no way diminishes one’s talent or value.” —Phylicia Rashad
  • “An artist can be truly evaluated only after he is dead. At the very 11th hour, he might do something that will eclipse everything else.” —Van Cliburn
  • “The difference between a bad artist and a good one is: the bad artist seems to copy a great deal; the good one really does.” —William Blake
  • “The test of the artist does not lie in the will with which he goes to work, but in the excellence of the work he produces.” —Thomas Aquinas
  • “Every artist picks what they want to put out there, what image they want to portray, and what they want people to know about where they’re from.” —Wiz Khalifa
  • “The artist produces for the liberation of his soul. It is his nature to create as it is the nature of water to run down the hill.” —W. Somerset Maugham
  • “Artists today think of everything they do as a work of art. It is important to forget about what you are doing – then a work of art may happen.” —Andrew Wyeth
  • “In order for the artist to have a world to express he must first be situated in this world, oppressed or oppressing, resigned or rebellious, a man among men.” —Simone De Beauvoir
  • “Artists need some kind of stimulating experience a lot of times, which crystallizes when you sing about it or paint it or sculpt it. You literally mold the experience the way you want. It’s therapy.” —Erykah Badu
  • “To be an artist includes much; one must possess many gifts – absolute gifts – which have not been acquired by one’s own effort. And, moreover, to succeed, the artist much possess the courageous soul.” —Kate Chopin