Master Artists: Quotes and Pictures

Hello and welcome to another new page on the Patapsco art blog! I have been wanting to start this page ever since I purchased some magnets from the Metropolitan Museum of Art featuring images and inspirational quotes from famous artists. I have found that many students think or assume that master artists don’t really struggle in making their art. Young people tend to assume that these master artists are just “good” at what they do, they know where they are going and it isn’t hard for them to get there. I have found that this is not really the case. Let’s get inspired from other artists’ struggles and achievements. Hopefully, this will help you to develop a positive attitude towards those challenging feelings that are so abundant when trying to make your art!

Feel free to post comments and quotes YOU have found from other artists so that I may include them here!

“The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to, and I paint whatever passes through my head without any other consideration.” Frida Kahlo, Mexican self-portrait painter.

“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.”
Scott Adams, American cartoonist and creator of the Dilbert comic strip.

“A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art.”

“It took me 40 years to find out that painting is not sculpture.”
Paul Cezanne, Post-Impressionist.

“I start a picture and I finish it. I don’t think about art while I work. I try to think about life.”

“I was a really lousy artist as a kid. Too abstract expressionist, or I’d draw a ram’s head, really messy. I’d never win painting contests. I remember losing to a guy who did a perfect Spiderman.” Jean-Michel Basquiat, graffiti artist and painter

“The object isn’t to make art, it’s to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.”

“Good composition is like a suspension bridge – each line adds strength and takes none away.”

“Don’t worry about your originality. You couldn’t get rid of it even if you wanted to. It will stick with you and show up for better or worse in spite of all you or anyone else can do. “

Robert Henri, Leading American painter, Ash Can School

“If you hear a voice within you saying, “You are not a painter,” then by all means paint… and that voice will be silenced, but only by working.”

“In an artist’s life, death is perhaps not the most difficult thing.”

“I am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it.”

“Just dash something down if you see a blank canvas staring at you with a certain imbecility. You do not know how paralyzing it is, that staring of a blank canvas which says to the painter: you don’t know anything.”

Vincent Willem van Gogh (1853-1890), Dutch Post-Impressionist artist.

Gaudi

“Color in certain places has the great value of making the outlines and structural planes seem more energetic.”

“Those who look for the laws of Nature as a support for their new works collaborate with the creator.”

Antoni Gaudi (born Antoni Gaudí i Cornet) – Catalonia, Spain – 25th of June, 1852 / Died 10th of June, 1926
Popular Antonio Gaudi buildings include “Sagrada Família”, “Casa Batllo” and “Casa Mila”

Susan Rothenberg

“Sometimes the painting starts to relate very directly to either sights seen or experiences felt, other times it just goes off on a tangent that you really can’t articulate.”

-Susan Rothenberg, b. 1945, living in New Mexico