Art gives us an experience that nothing else can. Famous art quotes will touch your heart and brighten your soul.
If you’re searching for best life quotes ever that perfectly capture what you’d like to say or just want to feel inspired yourself, browse through an amazing collection of aesthetic quotes, inspiring freedom quotes, and inspirational beautiful quotes.
Top 10 Art Quotes
Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun. – Pablo Picasso
I am seeking. I am striving. I am in it with all my heart. – Vincent van Gogh
The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls. – Pablo Picasso
Creativity takes courage. – Henri Matisse
If I could say it in words, there would be no reason to paint. – Edward Hopper
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
There are no lines in nature, only areas of color, one against another. – Édouard Manet
I paint flowers so they will not die. – Frida Kahlo
The position of the artist is humble. He is essentially a channel. – Piet Mondrian
Art is not what you see, but what you make others see. – Edgar Degas
Inspirational Art Quotes from Famous Artists
Art is either revolution or plagiarism. – Paul Gauguin
Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up. – Pablo Picasso
The great artist is the simplifier. – Vincent Van Gogh
Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is. – Jackson Pollock
I had so much fire in me and so many plans. – Claude Monet
You don’t take a photograph, you make it. – Ansel Adams
They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself. – Andy Warhol
What art is, in reality, is this missing link, not the links which exist. It’s not what you see that is art; art is the gap. – Marcel Duchamp
Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. – Pablo Picasso
Painting is easy when you don’t know how, but very difficult when you do. – Edgar Degas
To draw you must close your eyes and sing. – Pablo Picasso
Great art picks up where nature ends. – Marc Chagall
Art is meant to disturb, science reassures. – Georges Braque
Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing. – Salvador Dali
Art must be life — it must belong to everybody. – Marina Abramović
The chief enemy of creativity is ‘good’ sense. – Pablo Picasso
Let’s get a little crazy here. – Bob Ross
Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen. – Leonardo da Vinci
Every act of creation is first an act of destruction. – Pablo Picasso
Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still. – Dorothea Lange
The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity. – Alberto Giacometti
Love art in yourself, and not yourself in art. – Konstantin Stanislavski
It is important to express oneself…provided the feelings are real and are taken from you own experience. – Berthe Morisot
You can look at a picture for a week and never think of it again. You can also look at the picture for a second and think of it all your life. – Joan Miro
I shut my eyes in order to see. – Paul Gauguin
If I paint something, I don’t want to have to explain what it is. – Bob Ross
An artist should never be a prisoner of himself, prisoner of style, prisoner of reputation, prisoner of success. – Henri Matisse
The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection. – Michelangelo
Art must be an expression of love or it is nothing. – Marc Chagall
Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art. – Leonardo da Vinci
Don’t be an art critic, but paint, there lies salvation. – Paul Cezanne
Tell your own story, and you will be interesting. – Louise Bourgeois
I never paint dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality. – Frida Kahlo
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
A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art. – Paul Cezanne
It is better to be high-spirited even though one makes more mistakes, than to be narrow-minded and all to prudent. – Vincent van Gogh
There is no must in art because art is free. – Wassily Kandinsky
Art is the only way to run away without leaving home. – Twyla Tharp
The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize. – Robert Hughes
I want to touch people with my art. I want them to say, ‘he feels deeply, he feels tenderly.’ – Vincent Van Gogh
Art is a lie that makes us realize truth. – Pablo Picasso
You have to systematically create confusion; it sets creativity free. Everything that is contradictory creates life. – Salvador Dali
I have already settled it for myself, so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free. – Georgia O’Keeffe
Powerful Quotes About Art from Greatest Artists
To be an artist, you need to exist in a world of silence. – Louise Bourgeois
The best reason to paint is that there is no reason to paint. – Keith Haring
I wanted to start a revolution, using art to build the sort of society I myself envisioned. – Yayoi Kusama
A work is finished when an artist realizes his intentions. – Rembrandt
Art is to console those who are broken by life. – Vincent Van Gogh
The works must be conceived with fire in the soul but executed with clinical coolness. – Joan Miro
Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. – Banksy
Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things. – Edgar Degas
If you hear a voice within you saying, ’You are not a painter,’ then by all means paint… and that voice will be silenced. – Vincent van Gogh
What I dream of is an art of balance. – Henri Matisse
When I think of art I think of beauty. Beauty is the mystery of life. It is not in the eye it is in the mind. In our minds there is awareness of perfection. – Agnes Martin
If I’m going to be anything more than average, if anyone is going to remember me, then I need to go further, in art, in life, in everything! – Salvador Dali
The artist must create a spark before he can make a fire and before art is born, the artist must be ready to be consumed by the fire of his own creation. – Auguste Rodin
We tell people sometimes: we’re like drug dealers, come into town and get everybody absolutely addicted to painting. It doesn’t take much to get you addicted. – Bob Ross
The mind loves the unknown. It loves images whose meaning is unknown, since the meaning of the mind itself is unknown. – Rene Magritte
Art has always been the raft onto which we climb to save our sanity. I don’t see a different purpose for it now. – Dorothea Tanning
Once I knew that I wanted to be an artist, I had made myself into one. I did not understand that wanting doesn’t always lead to action. Many of the women had been raised without the sense that they could mold and shape their own lives, and so, wanting to be an artist (but without the ability to realize their wants) was, for some of them, only an idle fantasy, like wanting to go to the moon. – Judy Chicago
Art is something that makes you breathe with a different kind of happiness. – Anni Albers
Painting from nature is not copying the object; it is realizing one’s sensations. – Paul Cézanne
I am happy to be alive as long as I can paint. – Frida Kahlo
Every good composition is above all a work of abstraction. All good painters know this. But the painter cannot dispense with subjects altogether without his work suffering impoverishment. – Diego Rivera
For me, painting is a way to forget life. It is a cry in the night, a strangled laugh. – Georges Rouault
If you are not skillful enough to sketch a man jumping out of a window in the time it takes him to fall from the fourth story to the ground, you will never be able to produce great works. – Eugène Delacroix
Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. – Pablo Picasso
Color provokes a psychic vibration. Color hides a power still unknown but real, which acts on every part of the human body. – Wassily Kandinsky
I am seeking. I am striving. I am in it with all my heart. – Vincent van Gogh
Look at life with the eyes of a child. – Henri Matisse
I have no fear of making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own. – Jackson Pollock
I am independent! I can live and I love to work. – Mary Cassatt
Great art picks up where nature ends. – Marc Chagall
I didn’t expect to recover from my second operation but since I did, I consider that I’m living on borrowed time. Every day that dawns is a gift to me, and I take it in that way. I accept it gratefully without looking beyond it. – Henri Matisse
In spite of everything I shall rise again: I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing. – Vincent Van Gogh
What I am seeking is not the real and not the unreal but rather the unconscious, the mystery of the instinctive in the human race. – Amadeo Modigliani
If I could say it in words there would be no reason to paint. – Edward Hopper
If I create from the heart, nearly everything works: if from the head, almost nothing. – Marc Chagall
Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing–and keeping the unknown always beyond you. – Georgia O’Keeffe
For me, insanity is super sanity. The normal is psychotic. Normal means lack of imagination, lack of creativity. – Jean Dubuffet
I can’t understand how anyone is able to paint without optimism. Despite the general pessimistic attitude in the world today, I am nothing but an optimist. – Hans Hofmann
If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all. – Michelangelo
The main thing is to be moved, to love, to hope, to tremble, to live. – Auguste Rodin
To any artist, worthy of the name, all in nature is beautiful, because his eyes, fearlessly accepting all exterior truth, read there, as in an open book, all the inner truth. – Auguste Rodin
There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept. – Ansel Adams
I don’t listen to what art critics say. I don’t know anybody who needs a critic to find out what art is. – Jean-Michel Basquiat
One who knows how to appreciate color relationships, the influence of one color with another, their contrasts and dissonances, is promised an infinite variety of images. – Sonia Delaunay
Art is a line around your thoughts. – Gustav Klimt
Great art is the outward expression of an inner life of the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world. – Edward Hopper
I was not ready for abstraction. I clung to earth and her dear shapes, her density, her herbage, her juice. I wanted her volume, and I wanted to hear her throb. – Emily Carr
I wanted to support things that are helpful to people and maybe bash what I think is dangerous. So, I switched from being everybody to being myself. – Jenny Holzer
I was the first woman to paint cleanly, and that was the basis of my success. From a hundred pictures, mine will always stand out. And so, the galleries began to hang my work in their best rooms, always in the middle, because my painting was attractive. It was precise. It was ‘finished.’ – Tamara de Lempicka
To know ahead of time what you’re looking for means you’re then only photographing your own preconceptions, which is very limiting, and often false. – Dorothea Lange
Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love. – Claude Monet
A true artist is not one who is inspired, but one who inspires others. – Salvador Dali
Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision. – Salvador Dali
My illustrious lordship, I’ll show you what a woman can do. – Artemisia Gentileschi
Painting is just another way of keeping a diary. – Pablo Picasso
An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision. – James McNeill Whistler
My mother said to me, ‘If you are a soldier, you will become a general. If you are a monk, you will become the Pope.’ Instead, I was a painter, and became Picasso. – Pablo Picasso
I have always said that you do not see a thing until you look away from it. In other words, an object or a fact in nature has not become itself until it has been projected in the realm of the imagination. – Marsden Hartley
Some paint comes across directly onto the nervous system and other paint tells you the story in a long diatribe through the brain. – Francis Bacon
The main thing is to be moved, to love, to hope, to tremble, to live. – Auguste Rodin
The creative habit is like a drug. The particular obsession changes, but the excitement, the thrill of your creation lasts. – Henry Moore
Nothing makes me so happy as to observe nature and to paint what I see. – Henri Rousseau
I like to pretend that my art has nothing to do with me. – Roy Lichtenstein
Generally speaking, color directly influences the soul. Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another purposively, to cause vibrations in the soul. – Wassily Kandinsky
Art does not reproduce what we see. It makes us see. – Paul Klee
The true use of art is, first, to cultivate the artist’s own spiritual nature. – George Inness
It is important to express oneself…provided the feelings are real and are taken from you own experience. – Berthe Morisot
“The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery. – Francis Bacon
To be an artist is to believe in life. – Henry Moore
Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist. – René Magritte
The principles of true art is not to portray, but to evoke. – Jerzy Kosinski
The richness I achieve comes from nature, the source of my inspiration. – Claude Monet
Before I start carving the idea must be almost complete. I say ‘almost’ because the really important thing seems to be the sculptor’s ability to let his intuition guide him over the gap between conception and realization without compromising the integrity of the original idea.”- Barbara Hepworth
If the artist has outer and inner eyes for nature, nature rewards him by giving him inspiration. – Wassily Kandinsky
It is not so much where my motivation comes from but rather how it manages to survive. – Louise Bourgeois
Have no fear of perfection, you’ll never reach it. – Salvador Dalí
We don’t make mistakes, just happy little accidents. – Bob Ross
The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity. – Alberto Giacometti
I want to make paintings that look as if they were made by a child. – Jean-Michel Basquiat
To my mind one does not put oneself in place of the past, one only adds a new link. – Paul Cézanne
The beautiful, which is perhaps inseparable from art, is not after all tied to the subject, but to the pictorial representation. In this way and in no other does art overcome the ugly without avoiding it. – Paul Klee
