Artist Quotations | Page 8

As long as artists can make something, artists will continue to survive.

Artistry is important. Skill, hard work, rewriting, editing, and careful, careful craft: All of these are necessary. These are what separate the beginners from experienced artists.

The artist is an interpreter of Nature. People learn to love Nature through pictures. To the artist, nothing is in vain; nothing beneath his notice. If he is great enough, he will exalt every subject which he treats.

I have Dalinian thought: the one thing the world will never have enough of is the outrageous.

I think we have to bottom out. When the studios jump out of the ring, perhaps the artist can get back in.

If I had to play only for people who liked the music because they heard it on the radio, it wouldn't make me happy. That's why I'm working so hard to have, yes, a profile as an artist, but also a profile as a DJ.

Dance has always been my number one. I started when I was seven years old and I've had the opportunity to work with some really amazing artists.

My aim in painting has always been the most exact transcription possible of my most intimate impression of nature.

My make-up artist, she uses bronzer on the eyelids too. And also a little bit on the forehead to make everything look even.

I would say my dream collaboration would probably have to be with Drake. I think he is an amazing artist.

I think that it can be said of a lot of artists, and myself included, that we made the same record over and over from the beginning.

I went back and researched the history of gospel; where it came from, slavery times, communicating with each other without their master knowing what they are saying, and that gospel artists view themselves differently.

As an artist, I gotta stand up to my own work.

Being able to make work - if it's on your terms, and it's a good fit with the people who are supporting it - can be a very interesting exercise. When it doesn't work is when an artist just connects with a brand, and they try to take advantage of each other.

Fame was never something I was seeking in my artistic journey. It's to be used as a tool for an artist to break open doors and keep creating. That's how I enjoyed fame in '74; it was not just for the emptiness of being famous.

The artist is seen like a producer of commodities, like a factory that turns our refrigerators.

In my day, the only people who achieved real independence were my father, Mary Pickford and Charles Chaplin, who, with D. W. Griffith, formed United Artists. Other than that, everybody belonged to the big studios. They had no say in their own careers.

What I learned from Lennon was something that did stay with me my whole career, which is to be very straightforward. I actually love talking about taking pictures, and I think that helps everyone.

I think the greatest hip-hop artist of all time is Jay-Z, without a doubt. He just keeps amazing me with his performance, and since '96, that guy has been producing at least one hit every summer and every winter. That's a pretty good resume.

I think right now, you've seen these artists pop up over the last decade who've flirted with branching together a lot of different kinds of music. Some of them have been huge, and sold millions of records. And I think over time it's become a little bit of what the industry can be.

To be an artist you have to give up everything, including the desire to be a good artist.

I have a master plan as an artist. I've always said I'm not going to be punching nobody's clock. I will work as an artist to survive in this world.

The artist's job, I think, is to be a conduit for mystery. To intuit it, and recognize that the story-germ has some inherent mystery in it, and sort of midwife that mystery into the story in such a way that it isn't damaged in the process, and may even get heightened or refined.

Every person has parallel tracks. You have your personal life or your life as an artist, or whatever it is you do.

There are certain things you don't discuss with Ansel, especially if you don't agree.

No matter what as an artist that's always what you want to do, you want to connect to the audience, you want to be able to send whatever message it is that you're singing about, you want to be able to convey that - and not make them feel - you want them to feel it, you want them to feel what you feel.

Compared to a lot of artists, I'm usually quite covered up in videos and photo shoots.

Painting is damned difficult - you always think you've got it, but you haven't.

Allow the artist to finish the piece of work before you critique it.

I live in sin, to kill myself I live; no longer my life my own, but sin's; my good is given to me by heaven, my evil by myself, by my free will, of which I am deprived.

My father was an artist. When life was harder and he couldn't get jobs, he painted houses, but he was artistic. When I went to see his work, it was special. Somewhere along the line, I felt I was special. I didn't know why.

I wish I was a great writer or a great journalist or a great scientist or a great artist; I'm not.

Iconic artists are never straight ahead. Michael Jackson loved Elvis and Burt Bacharach, and uniquely blended both of them into what he did.

Even though I build buildings and I pursue my architecture, I pursue it as an artist. I deliberately keep a tiny studio. I don't want to be an architectural firm. I want to remain an artist.

I think that there was a fad where everyone said, 'I want you to create a signature step for my artist.' The thing is, for me, music creates the step. The artist commands the step, you know?

I think we typically, as Northerners, stereotype what the South is in so many negative ways. We kind of forget all the beautiful things that they contribute to make this country a country.

I'm a very restless person. I'm always doing something. The creative process never stops.

I'm an artist and that means I can be as egotistical as I want to be.

I think artists can influence only through making music that challenges people, excites them and flips them out. Music that repeats what you know in ever-decreasing derivation, that's unchallenging and unstimulating, deadens our minds, our imagination and our ability to see beyond the hell we find ourselves in.

In the future, I see me as being my own artist and definitely not a ballad singer!

I want a performance style that's more cerebral and emotional than physical. I want to be a creative artist, not a whirling dervish.

You continue to evolve with each album that goes by and, as an artist, you continue to expand with every recording project.

I really admire artists who take the time to recharge their batteries and not continually call on it. I think you can spot tired and jaded artists quite quickly.

I'm an artist; I'm not going to use trigonometry.

People in the media, it makes their day when someone they say is a five-star artist goes platinum.

It's good as an artist to always remember to see things in a new, weird way.

My advice is, if you are going to go on 'X Factor,' you have to know who you are as an artist.

I've learned over the years that you're going to be most successful at the things you're most excited to do. Every artist has a special set of tools. When you really use those tools, and you make yourself feel really good about the product you create, I think you'll find an audience for it. I've been very fortunate in that respect.

Every artist makes himself born. It is very much harder than the other time, and longer.

When you're from the East Coast or you're from the South, people expect you to sound a certain way. So if you don't sound that way, people won't label you as that type of artist. For me, I had a whole new lane to create for myself being from Pittsburgh and being a Midwest artist.

The reviewer is a singularly detested enemy because he is, unlike the hapless artist, invulnerable.

They ought to put out the eyes of painters as they do goldfinches in order that they can sing better.

As an adult (after college) and as an artist I thought about what was real, what sustained me - it was Christian Science. I was using that when I didn't know it. Saying yes to the Light and your better instinct.

I don't know to what extent someone can BECOME an artist - you either are or you aren't - and if you are you'll HAVE to make your way to some kind of sickly light, no matter how terrible the soil you were seeded in your nature will out somehow.

I'm an artist, and I go in the studio and make my music. And then I'll give it to my dad and he does what he does. And he does, you know, the press, and figuring out shows and whatnot. When it comes to my artistic freedom, he doesn't, like, step on my toes or anything.

I'm an artist with a message, and my message is more for society, casting the mirror onto them and saying, 'Hey, this is what we look like, what are we going to do about it, how are we going to use what we've been through to aid where we're going.'

I am a horrible visual artist. I can't fix a car, sew, knit, cook, etc. Statistically, there is more I don't do than do.

I toured with Skrillex, did an HBO commercial with Diplo. In the hip hop movement, I was the first artist Travis Scott ever featured with before he blew up. I had the songs with Chris Brown and Tyga. I've worked with some of the biggest artists in the world.

Acting is a general thing; it's not like being a primary artist like a painter or writer which stands the test of time. I don't think acting stands the test of time, but it can capture the mood of the moment, which is in itself very exciting, but it rarely lasts.

My mum is an artist and very into creative expression and freedom.

A snowball is simple, direct and familiar to most of us. I use this simplicity as a container for feelings and ideas that function on many levels.

I think that certainly the artists of the '40s, '50s and '60s were fighting a very conformist society, which didn't give them enough space to live or create, and they were bucking all kinds of spoken and unspoken rules.

My father was a professional artist all his life who encouraged my path as an artist.

As an artist you have the luxury of maybe presenting an issue in a certain way, as opposed to actually solving it.

I feel like my mission is to be honest with myself. My mission is to share my truth - share, not give. I think that's what an artist is supposed to do: I think they share.

No student of history can fail to see the moral interest of the Middle Ages, any more than an artist can fail to see their aesthetic interest.

I was a really lousy artist as a kid. Too abstract expressionist; or I'd draw a big ram's head, really messy. I'd never win painting contests. I remember losing to a guy who did a perfect Spiderman.

I don't have to ask anyone's permission to do anything. It's nice not have to get decisions out of three, sometimes four people, which can be like pulling teeth. So the amount of control that I have over what I'm doing is better for me as a solo artist.

Most artists, you know, you spend their entire lives learning how to play music and write songs, and they don't really know how the music business works.

It was not my dream to be an artist. How could it have been? I thought, artist, much like a leader, was something you either were or weren't. Never something you set out to be.

I'm not an artist. I tell inappropriate stories and jokes and I try to make people laugh.

I never felt oppressed because of my gender. When I'm writing a poem or drawing, I'm not a female; I'm an artist.

I don't listen to the contemporary pop artists. They all sound alike, anyway.

My dream artists to collaborate with are probably Cee Lo Green and Imogen Heap. They're completely out of my genre but they're both musical geniuses.

There are great disciplines from being a sportsman that you can transfer into being an artist. The preparation, the sacrifice, the constant desire to improve.

You see, what is my purpose of performance artist is to stage certain difficulties and stage the fear the primordial fear of pain, of dying, all of which we have in our lives, and then stage them in front of audience and go through them and tell the audience, 'I'm your mirror; if I can do this in my life, you can do it in yours.'

It's not about doing over the living room of someone who has bad taste in color. This is about restoring historic buildings and instilling pride in a community, which can be done through designing new public spaces and social gathering spots.

I built a reputation as a songwriter in the industry before my own hits. People were used to coming to me for songs. There were songs like 'Clown' and 'Mountains' that were my songs that I wanted to keep. But the record labels saw me as a songwriter. It was hard to get people to believe in me as an artist.

In classical oil painting, there seemed to be a radical turn to seeing things as the camera sees them, with that technological modification. I began to have a tremendous problem with all of this.

The architect should strive continually to simplify; the ensemble of the rooms should then be carefully considered that comfort and utility may go hand in hand with beauty.

I strongly suggest that we play down basics like who influenced whom, and instead study the way the influence is transformed, in other words: how the artist made it his own.

My work is purely autobiographical... It is about myself and my surroundings.

If you live through the initial stage of fame and get past it, and remember thats not who you are. If you live past that, then you have a hope of maybe learning how to spell the word artist.

You don't see artists sitting around a lot, talking about ideology. They find out what they believe, and what they're doing, by doing it.

Knowing now what goes into making a successful artist, it's disheartening.

Defeat furnishes good material to the poets and the artists, but none of us care to have the glory of the conquered apply to us.

When I was younger I thought I was an artist, and inspiration would just come to me.

All true artists in the world from all countries and all genres are influenced by Michael Jackson. There were music videos before Michael Jackson, and there were music videos after Michael Jackson. He brought such a huge change in the marketing and positioning of the music video.

As a young woman, I had been seeking experience, knowledge, truth, the stuff writers need in their work, but when the artist actually kicked in, I came to understand that in this romantic relationship I was not free to be myself, or to find myself, in order to begin the true work I needed to do.

All the time I'm changing as an artist and as a person.

In Hollywood, they think drawn animation doesn't work anymore, computers are the way. They forget that the reason computers are the way is that Pixar makes good movies. So everybody tries to copy Pixar. They're relying too much on the technology and not enough on the artists.

You know the question: 'How do you get to Carnegie Hall?' Answer: 'Practise?' Well, in my case, I got there by not practising. I didn't finish my music degree. And when I got into the pop world, I decided not to conform because I figured that the point of being an artist was that you shouldn't be like anyone else.

I think dress, hairstyle and make-up are the crucial factors in projecting an attractive persona and give one the chance to enhance one's best physical features.

When an artist leaves his work to amuse people, he loses his time and their respect. If people are to be amused by artists, it must be by employing them in their legitimate occupation.

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things.

I think that as an artist, the more that you can do to diversify, and kind of challenge yourself, the more you grow.

As a makeup artist, I learned quickly that the color of your lips affects the way a lipstick looks. If you see your friend wearing a great color, dont assume it will be right for you.

We are stymied by regulations, limited choice and the threat of litigation. Neither consultants nor industry itself provide research which takes architecture forward.

I only get involved with roles that I find intriguing, in top quality productions regardless of the medium. I try not to focus on the format itself and concentrate instead, on finding roles that challenge and entertain me as an artist.

My advice to new artists is to embrace a broader concept of timelessness than vintage or retro.