83 Inspiring Quotes From Artists

Art has the extraordinary ability to transcend boundaries, evoke emotions, and offer new perspectives. Artists, with their unique insights and creative prowess, have long been a source of inspiration for those seeking understanding and motivation. Through their words, we find guidance and encouragement in our own creative journeys. This collection of 83 inspiring quotes from artists brings together wisdom and reflections that resonate with anyone who appreciates the power of imagination and creativity. Whether you're an artist, an art enthusiast, or simply in need of a dose of inspiration, these quotes will spark new ideas and fuel your passion. Let their words be your muse as you explore the limitless world of art.

1. “Every artist was first an amateur.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

2. “No man is equal to his book. All the best products of his mental activity go into his book, where they come separated from the mass of inferior products with which they are mingled in his daily talk.” - Herbert Spencer

3. “Inside you there’s an artist you don’t know about… say yes quickly, if you know, if you’ve known it from before the beginning of the universe.” - Rumi

4. “For me, the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity.” - Henri Cartier-Bresson

5. “The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life.” - William Faulkner

6. “Whatever the source of emotion that drives me to create, I want to give it a form which has some connection with the visible world, even if it is only to wage war on that world....I want my paintings to be able to defend themselves to resist the invader, just as though there were razor blades on all surfaces so no one could touch them without cutting his hands.” - Pablo Picasso

7. “The artist is not a different kind of person, but every person is a different kind of artist.” - Eric Gill

8. “It costs nothing to dream and everything not to” - Rodney White

9. “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

10. “But will you not have a house to care for? Meals to cook? Children whining for this or that? Will you have time for the work?" "I'll make time," I promised. "The house will not always be so clean, the cooking may be a little hasty, and the whining children will sit on my lap and I'll sing to them while I work.” - Gloria Whelan

11. “Only by examining our personal biases can we grow as artists; only by cultivating empathy can we grow as people.” - Jen Knox

12. “It gives him spiritual freedom. To him life is a tragedy and by his gift of creation he enjoys the catharsis a purging of pity and terror, Which Aristotle tells is the object of art. Everything is transformed by his power into material and by writing it he can overcome it. Everything is grist to his mill. ... The artist is the only free man.” - W. Somerset Maugham

13. “An artist is like a woman who can do nothing but love, and who succumbs to every stray male jackass.” - Heinrich Böll

14. “Does it not occur to people that I might be artificial by nature?” - Maurice Ravel

15. “Suicide carried off many. Drink and the devil took care of the rest” - Robert Louis Stevenson

16. “I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste.” - Marcel Duchamp

17. “The artist is always beginning. Any work of art which is not a beginning, an invention, a discovery is of little worth.” - Ezra Pound

18. “Where Norman Rockwell is the Artist for the man on the street, O'Henry is his author.” - Sonia Rumzi

19. “It is only in his work that an artist can find reality and satisfaction, for the actual world is less intense than the world of his invention and consequently his life, without recourse to violent disorder, does not seem very substantial. The right condition for him is that in which his work in not only convenient but unavoidable.” - Tenessee Williams

20. “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. 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. Things occur to you. If you're sitting around trying to dream up a great art 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 absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that's almost never the case.” - Chuck Close

21. “Art-making is not about telling the truth but making the truth felt” - Christian Boltanski

22. “Sorrowful and great is the artist's destiny.” - Franz Liszt

23. “The truth is, anyone who puts so much of herself and her life into art as you do must naturally fear any failure in that art as a potential threat to your life. And so you protect your art more than you protect your health or the common forms of happiness the rest of us have. And you probably have this in common with every artist you admire.” - Arthur Phillips

24. “It's the movies that have really been running things in America ever since they were invented. They show you what to do, how to do it, when to do it, how to feel about it, and how to look how you feel about it."Andy Warhol” - Andy Warhol

25. “There is only one thing left for you to do,” John Sloan advised one artist. “Pull off your socks and try with your feet.” - Ross Wetzsteon

26. “[I]t was [Barnett] Newman who made the famously wry remark, “Aesthetics is for the artist as ornithology is for the birds,” - Ross Wetzsteon

27. “The notion of making money by popular work, and then retiring to do good work on the proceeds, is the most familiar of all the devil's traps for artists.” - Logan Pearsall Smith

28. “There is, perhaps, no more dangerous man in the world than the man with the sensibilities of an artist but without creative talent. With luck such men make wonderful theatrical impresarios and interior decorators, or else they become mass murderers or critics.” - Dame Edna Everage

29. “The great artists are those who impose their personal vision upon humanity.” - Guy de Maupassant

30. “Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction." ― Pablo Picasso” - Pablo Picasso

31. “The cruelest thing you can do to an artist is tell them their work is flawless when it isn't” - Yahtzee Croshaw

32. “You know it's ART, when the check clears.” - Andy Warhol

33. “One does not have to be a philosopher to be a successful artist, but he does have to be an artist to be a successful philosopher. His nature is to view the world in an unpredictable albeit useful light.” - Criss Jami

34. “Because there are hundreds of different ways to say one thing, I, being a writer, songwriter, and poet, speak childishly and incoherently. In speech there is so much to decide in so little time.” - Criss Jami

35. “Authors can write stories without people assuming that they are autobiographies, but songwriters and poets are often considered to be the characters in their works. I like Michelangelo's vision, 'I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” - Criss Jami

36. “I want to be famous but unknown!” - Edgar Degas

37. “It is a matter of artistic instinct. In his own thoughts and feelings and way of doing things an actor is worth nothing or he is worth something. If he is worth something then he will try to be worth something more as is only normal in anyone who wants to get on. I can think of no other way to explain artistic development.” - Maurice Chevalier

38. “Inspiration comes unawares, from unaccountable sources that have nothing to do with planning or intelligence. Let it cool ever so slightly, and you are left, pen or brush in hand, with no inspiration at all. Gifted people need not, therefore, make a song and dance about being or supposing themselves superior. They simply happened to be born with that fortunate, subconscious equipment of theirs, and the mystery exists independently of intelligence or ambition.” - Maurice Chevalier

39. “Where there is a true art and genuine virtuosity the artist can paint an incomparable masterpiece without leaving even a trace of his identity.” - Orhan Pamuk

40. “The study of beauty is a duel in which the artist cries out in terror before being vanquished.” - Charles Baudelaire

41. “De kunstenaar is een arbeider lijk gij en ik. Hij maakt schoonheid, en hij wordt daar meestal niet voor betaald. De kunstenaar leeft en sterft met de arbeider mee. Al waar de arbeider naar verlangt, tracht de kunstenaar nu reeds gestalte te geven. Zo is de schrijver niet een dwaas die van sterren en maneschijn zingt, maar een ziener, een profeet over hoe het zou kunnen zijn. Dat is zijn plicht, zoals het de plicht van de arbeider is om de kunstenaar tegemoet te komen.” - Louis Paul Boon

42. “Every true artist is at war with the world.” - Anthony Kiedis

43. “Vivent les fous qui sautent à pieds joints là où n'osent se poser les anges.” - Charles Daudelin

44. “I sat there and my love to him poured out more and more, and, lo, he flew down to a stump, and then to my knee. I knew beyond a shadow of doubt that the important thing is the love that goes out from oneself.” - Agnes Grinstead Anderson

45. “If there’s a thing, a scene, maybe, an image that you want to see real bad, that you need to see but it doesn’t exist in the world around you, at least not in the form that you envision, then you create it so that you can look at it and have it around, or show it to other people who wouldn’t have imagined it because they perceive reality in a more narrow, predictable way. And that’s it. That’s all an artist does.” - Tom Robbins

46. “None can sense more deeply than you artists, ingenious creators of beauty that you are, something of the pathos with which God at the dawn of creation looked upon the work of his hands.” - Pope John Paul II

47. “Y el artista no es, como el vulgo piensa, una persona jovial que esparce por aquí y por allá obras de arte por mera exuberancia, sino que infortunadamente es por lo general una pobre alma que se sofoca con riquezas excedentes y que por lo tanto tiene que obsequiar algunas de ellas.” - Hermann Hesse

48. “I pastiche, I quote, I lie. Fake, forge, forage, fabricate, copy, borrow, transform, steal. I illusion. I’m a genuine deceiver, a shy sham artist.” - Shawna Lemay

49. “An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.” - Jean Cocteau

50. “A true artist removes his heart willingly, allows constructive criticism to stomp it, then puts it back—bruised and aching—as he continues to strive for excellence due to the all-consuming obsession and love for his art.” - H G Mewis

51. “If somebody's getting depressed in life, I would say, "Look at me'. I've got here believing in me. Sometimes, things do not go as you expected and you could feel as if you were ruining everything. But Everything can be only the path to get to the success of your dream. You can not fail until you give up. As long as you keep going, you are on the path for your success.” - Hiroko Sakai

52. “Wherever I wander off to, when I draw, when I paint, I get my life back. I am lucky that I am an Artist.” - Hiroko Sakai

53. “She, however, attentively watched my looks, and her artist's pride was gratified, no doubt, to read my heartfelt admiration in my eyes.” - Anne Brontë

54. “This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art.” - James Baldwin

55. “‎"But when I fell in love with black, it contained all color. It wasn’t a negation of color. It was an acceptance. Because black encompasses all colors. Black is the most aristocratic color of all.... You can be quiet and it contains the whole thing." Happy birthday to Louise Nevelson (1899-1988)!” - Louise Nevelson. Sky Cathedral. 1958.

56. “An artist must have imagination. An artist who does not use his imagination is a mechanic.” - Robert Henri

57. “What makes an amazing artist? It's not his ability to impress but his skill in touching people's lives through his craft. When he does even a simple piece of work with not much adornment (fanciful words, colors) and it moves the hearts of his audience, it is considered to be a masterpiece! A true artist lets people enter a different kind of sanctuary out of the conventional. What makes his work standout is its uniqueness -if it has a HEART.” - Elizabeth E. Castillo

58. “[Kandinsky] arrived, as they say, 'with snow on his boots', and it never really melted.” - Neville Weston

59. “Each of us is an artist of our days; the greater our integrity and awareness, the more original and creative our time will become.” - John O'Donohue

60. “Instead of chasing the idea of truth, what we should be doing is embracing the medium of drawing and using it for a purpose that fulfils our needs as an artist or designer.” - Peter Stanyer

61. “You know, Hitler wanted to be an artist. At eighteen he took his inheritance, seven hundred kronen, and moved to Vienna to live and study... Ever see one of his paintings? Neither have I. Resistance beat him. Call it overstatement but I'll say it anyway: it was easier for Hitler to start World War II than it was for him to face a blank square of canvas.” - Steven Pressfield

62. “A record deal doesn't make you an artist; you make yourself an artist” - Lady Gaga

63. “Ordinary persons, he said, smiling, found no differences between men. The artist found them all.” - Alexander Theroux

64. “My main task as an artist is to show you either what you have never seen before -- or to show you what you have seen countless times, in a way you've never seen it.” - Mike Duron

65. “She preferred the quiet solitary atmosphere, to create in her own world of paint and colour, the thrill of anticipating how her works would turn out as she eyed the blank sheets of paper or canvas before starting her next masterpiece. How satisfying it was to mess around in paint gear, without having to worry about spills, starch or frills, that was the life!” - E.A. Bucchianeri

66. “The greatest artists express their inner self; an artist paints her rage; a writer pens his fear; a dancer expresses her sadness through movement; and a musician's loneliness echoes in his performance.” - Gerard de Marigny

67. “I wanna be forever young.” - Alphaville

68. “The artist’s task is to save the soul of mankind; and anything less is a dithering while Rome burns. Because of the artists, who are self-selected, for being able to journey into the Other, if the artists cannot find the way, then the way cannot be found.” - Terence McKenna

69. “Not anyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere.” - Jan Pinkava Ratatouille

70. “[Who are the artists you admire, Surrealist or otherwise?]Remedios Varo, Max Ernst, Charlotte Salomon, Goya, Aubrey Beardsley. Beardsley is not so much about the impossible as he is about freaks and deformities, but those are interesting to me too.” - Audrey Niffenegger

71. “The prevarication and white lies which a mind that keeps itself ambitiously pure is as uneasy under as a great artist under the false touches that no eye detects but his own, are worn as lightly as mere trimming when once the actions have become a lie.” - George Eliot

72. “When the artist is alive in any person, whatever his kind of work may be, he becomes an inventive, searching, daring, self-expressive creature. He becomes interesting to other people. He disturbs, upsets, enlightens, and opens ways for better understanding. Where those who are not artists are trying to close the book, he opens it and shows there are still more pages possible.” - Robert Henri

73. “An artist's concern is to capture beauty wherever he finds it.” - Kazuo Ishiguro

74. “You say great artists sell their souls for their art?""Maybe," she ventured."That's true, I suppose. If you're doing it right, anyway. I've probably sold mine. Jack's certainly sold his. And you, I imagine.""I have not!" she said, anger showing clear in her eyes. "Not literally," he said hastily. "But we give up being a person to be an artist, don't we?” - Sam Starbuck

75. “Where the Divine and the Human Meet" shows how important it is to meet the world with the creativity of an artist, particularly in these uncertain times: "What do we do with chaos? Creativity has an answer. We are told by those who have studied the processes of nature that creativity happens at the border between chaos and order. Chaos is a prelude to creativity. We need to learn, as every artist needs to learn, to live with chaos and indeed to dance with it as we listen to it and attempt some ordering. Artists wrestle with chaos, take it apart, deconstruct and reconstruct from it. Accept the challenge to convert chaos into some kind of order, respecting the timing of it all, not pushing beyond what is possible—combining holy patience with holy impatience--that is the role of the artist. It is each of our roles as we launch the twenty-first century because we are all called to be artists in our own way. We were all artists as children. We need to study the chaos around us in order to turn it into something beautiful. Something sustainable. Something that remains".” - Matthew Fox

76. “The artistic disposition is little more than an extreme form of sulking.” - Mark Simpson

77. “In such a person, sadness breeds purpose; finding inspiration in the darkness and often times, I believe, they will impress a hell onto their own lives in order to re-create it, that others might suffer the experience from the comfort of their armchairs. - Quote from Her Past's Present.” - Michael Poeltl

78. “—except for the fact that your scars mean you’ve been hurting, I am one-hundred-percent cool with having them in the painting. Some models, especially the professional ones, it’s like painting air-brushed people. Give me something raw any day.” - J. Kenner

79. “People listening to songs are like people reading novels: for a few minutes, for a few hours, someone else gets to come in and hijack that part of your brain that's always thinking. A good book or song kidnaps your interior voice and does all the driving. With the artist in charge you're free for a little while to leave your body and be someone else.” - Douglas Coupland

80. “All I wanted was my art and the chance to be the creator of my own world, my own reality.” - Charlotte Eriksson

81. “My first thought, as a child, was that the artist brings something into the world that didn't exist before, and that he does it without destroying something else. A kind of refutation of the conservation of matter. That still seems to me its central magic, its core of joy.” - John Updike

82. “The awakening an artist must be ruthless, not only with herself but with others.” - Steven Pressfield

83. “...she (the artist, the writer) doesn't wait for inspiration, she acts in the anticipation of its apparition.” - Steven Pressfield