Top 100 Being An Artist Quotes
#2. I have different hats; I'm a mother, I'm a woman, I'm a human being, I'm an artist and hopefully I'm an advocate. All of those plates are things I spin all the time.
Annie Lennox
#3. Sometimes being an artist is a real drag. It can be incredibly bureaucratic.
Micah Lexier
#4. But I found that being an artist and doing accurate work is very difficult.
Alan Bean
#5. With my friends in Brooklyn, many of them started out as artists. I saw many of these friends move into late middle age, still struggling without health insurance or a cushion. I saw people who had given up being artists. Being an artist necessitates a compromise or living on the edge.
Kate Christensen
#6. Without music I wouldn't have the ability to be in business. The opportunity to be in business came with the finances from music and the notoriety that comes with being successful as an artist. So I see myself as an artist first, but I'm absolutely conscious of business.
Curtis Jackson
#7. I feel like fashion and style is a big part of being an artist.
Chanel West Coast
#8. Being an artist and a musician, I have witnessed the previous generation taking the art form, not as a way of making a living, but as a belief, an almost maniacal, sometimes insane devotion and commitment to communication.
David Finckel
#9. An artist can respect the backfield of fact before which every human being stands and choose not to address those facts.
Tom Bissell
#10. After being an Impressionist, Cubist, and an Abstract Expressionist, I was influenced by realistic artists, including Andrew Wyeth in the late '50s, and I haven't changed my style since.
Robert Bateman
#11. Don't listen to what anyone tells you about the kind of music you make. Just make it! Be yourself, make your own music, and be totally true to your art. Because it's kind of a selfish thing to be an artist.
Billy Sherwood
#12. As struggles go, being an artist isn't that much of one.
Brian Eno
#13. Being an artist means belonging to a unique, exciting gang of outlaws.
Robert Venosa
#14. Whether it's just the career path of doing independent music, being an artist, however you want to pigeon-hole it, it creates a certain type of character.
Doseone
#15. Being an artist is not exactly the most universally respected, or secure thing to do with your life. It can be frightening and you can feel that you're taking a lot of risks just with your own life, and your family's security. But the rewards outweigh those things.
Joan Osborne
#16. I am an artist and a political being as well.
Robin Morgan
#17. I think about that 'empty' space a lot. That emptiness is what allows for something to actually evolve in a natural way. I've had to learn that over the years - because one of the traps of being an artist is to always want to be creating, always wanting to produce.
Meredith Monk
#18. Being an artist, it's all a journey, and you learn where the subtle patterns lie.
Graeme Base
#19. When you devote yourself to being an artist, you have to stay on your craft and always try to get better and better.
Raekwon
#20. Being an artist is in part an act of rupture.
Ira Sachs
#21. My dream is to do exactly what I'm doing. I love writing and directing, and being somebody that can write about an artist I love or make a film about it. That's great. I would leave the other stuff to those who do it much better.
Cameron Crowe
#22. I love being a mommy, and I love being an artist, and I love being a singer and an actress and making a movie - all that stuff I feel very passionate about, so I have a lot of energy for it.
Melora Hardin
#23. After being taught sets and reps and working at it for a length of time you can't paint by numbers anymore. It must come from within. Any artist has an emotional contact with their work. A true bodybuilder doesn't just build muscle he creates muscle. You can't be a robot.
Tom Platz
#24. Creatively, I'd like to achieve not only being an artist, but being a businessman and having my own music home.
Anthony Hamilton
#25. Pseudo-artists think that being an artist means opposing whatever seems to be an establishment. That is not creative at all. True creativity is the ability to gain perspective wherever you may have missed it before.
Criss Jami
#26. I am a serious artist in my own right, in the sense that I've spent my entire life being an artist and trying to be an artist and making work.
David Shrigley
#27. The out-of-work actor wears out more than shoe leather. The very sensibilities that make him an artist are shattered by the disregard he is shown as a human being.
Bette Davis
#28. You take the risk of being rejected. If you have pretentions to be an artist of any kind, you have to take the risk of people rejecting you and thinking you're an arsehole.
Roger Waters
#29. Politics is politics; art is art. If you play a political role, you have to stop being an artist.
Youssou N'Dour
#30. There's no map for being an artist.
Seth Godin
#31. I think, as an artist, part of your job is being aware of what's going on around you and not selling out and not following the trend, which I'm totally against.
Tyler Farr
#32. I know who I am and what I'm doing in my life and what I've accomplished and continue to accomplish as a performer, as a writer, as an artist, as a person, as a human being.
Justin Bieber
#33. People have these weird ideas about artists being romantic, generous people, and sometimes I feel like an asshole, a selfish kid, a brat, the lucky one, because I get to do this and it's how I make my living.
Nate Lowman
#34. I never want to be too mean with my songs, but with 'I Hope It Rains' it was definitely somewhere in the middle with being sassy but also a little class in there as well. It was a good blend for me and who I want to be perceived as an artist.
Jana Kramer
#35. As far as the balance between being a journalist, being an artist, being a storyteller - documentary filmmakers are all three of those things. The balance between them is affected by the film itself, the topic of the film.
Marshall Curry
#36. I don't look at myself as a celebrity. People recognize me, but it's all about my music, my songs. It's not like I'm a greater being. I take my kids to school, pick them up, go to the grocery store. I'm a mother, and my kids mean more to me than even being an artist.
Faith Evans
#37. There's this privileged position of being an artist where you can do things on a more experimental nature simply to see what happens.
Andrea Zittel
#38. Being an artist, it's always tempting to measure success through other people's eyes, be they critics, journalists or audiences.
Sara Blecher
#39. To be born with a unique instinct, will demand 'unique duties'. If you didn't think about being an artist before 7 years of age you probably don't have it and you will be able to paint what you want to paint.
David Luiz
#40. Practicality continues to be a challenge for me - it's at odds with being an artist. I actually had a career on stage in New York - not a brilliant career or I'd still be doing it - but I got enough work to keep my agent and my union health insurance.
Debra Dean
#41. Being an artist is not only what you do, but how you live your life.
Ben Shahn
#42. My early comics are really reflective of being kind of a befuddled, single loser in the Bay Area, and I think having kids has been by far the most profound impact on me as a person and as an artist.
Adrian Tomine
#43. Mistress Creation keeps calling my name ... i long for her, and she, for me ... we will be reunited soon. In the interim, i bide my time dreaming of her, writing about her and stretching her across the vast landscape of my imagination. "Soon", i whisper to her, "Soon
Jaeda DeWalt
#44. An artist must be pure of heart," said Gerdes, "for true art is the expression of the artist's innermost being. To create beauty, one must be beautiful" - she pressed her hands to her bosom - "in here, in your heart of hearts.
Stephen R. Lawhead
#45. I hadn't known anything else, other than being an artist, and I needed to be a person for a while, really get to know myself without that whole thing [of selling music] surrounding me.
Tove Styrke
#46. The good thing about being an artist, is it's a legitimate way of looking at things cross-eyed.
John Chamberlain
#47. The story that I wanna tell is pretty much about the way I grew up. Being bi-racial, growing up in a big city and being an artist.
Lenny Kravitz
#48. I really don't see any influence of my work on any artists. But I do think I've had an influence on drawings' being shown. I've had an influence on the economics of it.
Raymond Pettibon
#49. If an artist does not have an erotic involvement with everything that he sees, he may as well give up. To be a human being may a very messy thing, but to be an artist is something else entirely, because art is religion, art is sex, art is society. Art is everything.
Lucas Samaras
#50. In Europe, being an artist is a form of behavior. In America, it's an excuse for a form of behavior.
William Faulkner
#51. 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
#52. Being an artist is supposed to be a scam, not a career.
Wade Guyton
#53. I've always been interested in how fast-moving our identity is and that I've never been able to pin down who I truly am. That inspires me to write, because I feel like that cements me a bit, in that I find my identity in being an artist.
Marina And The Diamonds
#54. I discovered early that as an artist there was absolutely nothing wrong with being surrounded by people who were not dedicated to your field.
Junot Diaz
#55. A sense of community has always been important to me. I understood very early that I could not grow as an artist or as a person without being connected to institutions and clients that served the community.
Jerry Pinkney
#56. I had already established, as you know, that it was logically impossible for Kenneth to be distressed by anything that might occur between Ned and myself; but Kenneth, being an artist, has perhaps not studied logic and is unaware of the impossibility.
Sarah Caudwell
#57. As an artist, I used to think that my responsibility was to do good work. But I had to learn from the '70s on that being a public figure presents another aspect of responsibility.
Patti Smith
#58. My daughter's 19. I'm not asking her to develop as an artist. I'm just asking her to develop as a full person, human being.
Chuck D
#59. You really need to stop Googling yourself and start being an artist.
Alan Palomo
#60. I don't think you can prevent an artist from being and I don't think you can cause one to be. No one knows what makes an artist.
Robert Engman
#61. Indeed, being an artist is not just a job but an identity dependent on a broad range of extracurricular intelligences.
Sarah Thornton
#62. All authentic art is conceived at a sacred moment and nourished in a blessed hour; an inner impulse creates it, often without the artist being aware of it.
Caspar David Friedrich
#63. Being an artist isn't a genetic disposition or a specific talent. It's an attitude we can all adopt. It's a hunger to seize new ground, make connections, and work without a map. If you do those things, you're an artist.
Seth Godin
#64. I feel like the point of being an artist is to have your own voice: to do it the way you would do it and not the way anyone else would do it. If you're a strong enough writer, then that voice is going to come out all the time, and I can't stop it from coming out, no matter what I do.
Jason Robert Brown
#65. I often joke that I straddle psychosis and neurosis, and that being an artist keeps me in the middle, so I can work between the two.
Sam Taylor-Wood
#66. An artist who is inspired is being obvious. He's not making any decisions, he's not weighing one idea against another. He's accepting his first thoughts.
Keith Johnstone
#67. I leave the genre labeling to other people. I really do. If I were to think too hard about it, that would stifle you creatively. If you think too hard about who other people want you to be as an artist, it stops you from being who you want to be as an artist.
Taylor Swift
#68. All you can do as an artist is do what you think is an extension of you. You put down on paper ... who you are. Thats what being an artist is all about. And when it gets done, you dont look back at it and say, Oh, I could have done that better
Justin Timberlake
#69. I think that being an artist is more an approach to life than an approach to work.
Andrew Levitas
#70. The old lessons of submissiveness and fragility made us victims. Women are so much more than that. You can be a businesswoman, a mother, an artist, and a feminist - whatever you want to be - and still be a sexual being. It's not mutually exclusive.
Beyonce Knowles
#71. I completely take on the risk, the poker game, which being an artist means, and I'm going to try to make a film which honestly reflects what I have in my head.
Antonio Banderas
#72. Being an artist doesn't mean that you're a good artist. That was the bargain I first made with myself: I'd say, I'm an artist, but I'm not really very good.
Paul Simon
#73. My parents constantly tried to talk me out of being an artist. They had gone through the whole journey with my sister and just wanted me to have a normal teenage life.
Solange Knowles
#74. I guess I've always liked the idea of being an artist.
Larry Rivers
#75. Part of the business of being an artist is abetting talent. The best do that.
Faith Sullivan
#76. If I had the capabilities of being something other than I am, I would. It's no fun being an artist. You know what it's like, writing, it's torture.
John Lennon
#77. Being an artist is a very long game. It is not a 10-year game. I hope I'll be around making art when I'm 80.
Anish Kapoor
#78. What do you think an artist is? ... he is a political being, constantly aware of the heart breaking, passionate, or delightful things that happen in the world, shaping himself completely in their image. Painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war.
Pablo Picasso
#79. Frankly, I get sick of being considered a 'young woman filmmaker' rather than an individual artist, as a man would be.
Gillian Armstrong
#80. A man who sets out to become an artist at the mile is something like a man who sets out to discover the most graceful method of being hanged. No matter how logical his plans, he can not carry them out without physical suffering.
Neal Bascomb
#81. I never decided at all to be an artist; being an artist seems to have happened to me.
Anne Truitt
#82. Yeah, I really like being alive. But I definitely don't have any intentions as an artist.
John Frusciante
#83. Every normal human being (and not merely the 'artist') has an inexhaustible store of buried images in his subconscious, it is merely a matter of courage or liberating procedures ... of voyages into the unconscious, to bring pure and unadulterated found objects to light.
Max Ernst
#84. There's a great difference between being popular and being an artist.
Shirley Knight
#85. I was being an artist, being sensitive and technical as artists are. I'm sure Leonardo Da Vinci did that. Artists don't always feel the same as others feel about their work.
Roy Ayers
#87. I always thought that it was every performer's dream. That's the epitome of being an artist, being able to express song, dance and acting in a live theatre setting and really connecting with an audience on that level.
Deborah Cox
#88. I am a human being and an artist: I really, simply, surely am.
Eric Maisel
#89. There is no difference between being an artist and being in love.
Marty Rubin
#90. I'm right now standing inside Hamilton-Selway Fine Art as an artist, as a philanthropist, as a child of God, and more importantly as a human being.
Steven Jackson
#91. The worst thing that being an artist could do to you would be that it would make you slightly unhappy constantly.
J.D. Salinger
#92. 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.
Philippe Petit
#93. Because she favours solitude and indwelling, an artist can live a significantly more claustrophobic life that she had ever intended.
Eric Maisel
#94. To an artist, creating an image means being in love with it.
Yevgeny Zamyatin
#95. [My mother] would have me smothered like the Princes in the Tower if I showed any inclination for being an artist. She thought all artists little better than lunatics.
Francis Meadow Sutcliffe
#96. 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.
Matt Smith
#97. This image of wanting to be an artist - that I would in some way become an artist -was very strong. I knew for a long, long time that that's what I would be. But nothing I ever did seemed to bring me any nearer to the condition of being an artist. And I didn't know how to do it.
Jasper Johns
#98. The main thing is to be moved, to love, to hope, to tremble, to live. Be a man before being an artist!
Auguste Rodin
#99. Unless I am both capable of and willing to reopen the wound every time I write a song, if I choose to not look inside myself to write music, I'm really not worth being called an artist at all.
Lady Gaga
#100. To be an artist means a lifetime of being told no, with the occasional yes showing up just to give you enough hope to carry on.
Jami Attenberg
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