Top 100 Doing Art Quotes
#1. My anxiety level of my own work and what I'm doing and focusing on my art and all of that stuff? That's fundamental.
Sufjan Stevens
#2. I know now that everybody in the arts is forever a beginner. Experience counts for a great deal and very little. Every night onstage I feel I am starting from scratch, still not quite sure what I am doing and where I am going, thrown by the simplest thing that goes wrong.
Joan Rivers
#3. Maybe in any art you have to be wholly you in the context of whatever you're doing.
Mariel Hemingway
#4. We were doing performance art as far back as 1965, just not calling it that.
Joseph Jarman
#5. Punk rock has become another viable art form. It always was. But now it's like everyone's doing it.
Tre Cool
#6. Art was a way for me to express myself and for me to also escape because it was tough growing up as a child. We didn't have a lot of money. I was always creating. I was writing stories. I was doing comic books. I made my own universe.
Michelle Phan
#7. I don't distinguish between magic and art. When I got into magic, I realised I had been doing it all along, ever since I wrote my first pathetic story or poem when I was twelve or whatever. This has all been my magic, my way of dealing with it.
Alan Moore
#8. There is no such thing as doing the nuts and bolts of reading in Kindergarten through 5th grade without coherently developing knowledge in science, and history, and the arts ... it is the deep foundation in rich knowledge and vocabulary depth that allows you to access more complex text.
David Coleman
#9. The world is full of bands and bullshit, and if I'm doing a stupid art project like rock 'n' roll then I want to spare my audience as much as possible.
Ariel Pink
#10. I don't think there's anything really wrong with influence because I think that one can use another man's art as material either literally or just implying that they're doing that, without it representing a lack of a point of view.
Robert Rauschenberg
#11. I never thought I would be a painter. That I might make a world and walk into it and forget myself. That art would be something I would not have any way of not doing.
Peter Heller
#12. The parasite of art, the virus of art, never ceases to gnaw awat at your brain, never ceases to torture you with the knowledge that whatever you're doing could be done more beautifully, more powerfully, more stirringly, more disturbingly, more deeply.
Brian Morton
#13. Limit your day to what you feel comfortable with doing - put the rest on the shelf - for further consideration down the line.
Art Hochberg
#14. I've always wanted to do things differently, and if one person or ten people are doing the same, then I want to do it differently. I love to travel, I love art, I love fashion. I love going to great restaurants and trying different things. Different cultures are inspiring to me.
Molly Sims
#15. I realised the bohemian life was not for me. I would look around at my friends, living like starving artists, and wonder, 'Where's the art?' They weren't doing anything. And there was so much interesting stuff to do, so much fun to be had ... maybe I could even quit renting.
P. J. O'Rourke
#16. Wherever we are, whatever we're doing and herever we are going, we owe it to ourselves, to our art, to the world to do it well.
Ryan Holiday
#17. I couldn't live on the singing at first, so I worked as a cleaner, in a launderette, in a garage, face painting and doing the windows of shops at Christmas, 'cause I had been to art college.
Imelda May
#18. I did work at Christie's for a couple of weeks, getting ready for 'The Devil Wears Prada,' getting people coffee and doing whatever they needed around the office. It was amazing. I got to see some wonderful art, and everybody was really nice. It was great.
Anne Hathaway
#19. Movies have been doing so much of the same thing - in slightly different ways - for so long that few of the possibilities of this great hybrid art have yet been explored.
Pauline Kael
#20. Art makes murder into the supreme image of Beauty and in doing so sets free the vengeful God. (referring to Jean Lorrain's LE VICE ERRANT)
Jennifer Birkett
#21. But don't call me an actor. I'm just a worker. I am an entertainer. Don't say that what I am doing is art.
Javier Bardem
#22. I enjoy theater just for the sheer excitement of it and the immediate response that you get, and how every night the audience is a little bit different; but then, it's expensive to work in N.Y., and stage work is limited, so you're just doing it for the art.
Dorian Missick
#23. There is one plain rule of life. Try thyself unweariedly till thou findest the highest thing thou art capable of doing, faculties and outward circumstances being both duly considered, and then do it.
John Stuart Mill
#24. I speak for an art ... weary of its puny exploits, weary of pretending to be able, of being able, of doing a little better the same old thing, of going a little further along a dreary road.
Samuel Beckett
#25. I've never had to work out of the arts. I've always either been a writer or an editor, or something where I've made my living from doing what I love. You can't get any better than that.
Len Wein
#27. Having previously graduated from a 2-year commercial arts class, I thought that commercial illustration was the best way to make a living doing art. But the more tattoos that I did, the more I realized what artistic career potential tattooing had and I enjoyed it.
William Webb
#28. If you chase the art, you really can't fail because you'll always be able to look at yourself in the mirror. And that's not about making angry decisions, either, it's about always doing the right thing for you, your fans and your art.
Gerard Way
#29. From being at art college, I've always hated people that have the gall to think that they're being incredibly different when they're doing something in a very acceptable way, something safe that they've seen someone else doing.
Sade Adu
#30. I did an art show for Donald Trump at his house in Palm Beach, Florida. It was a bunch of pop art and stuff like that, so I wasn't doing any graffiti at that time, so I'd say from about 2000 to 2006, I wasn't doing any graffiti.
Alec Monopoly
#31. I am a real person that cares about his art and cares about what he's doing - I have a heart and a soul and want to touch people and give.
LL Cool J
#32. The reason companies work is because you're able to get a lot of people doing the work; it's not because of this visionary. Steve Jobs didn't make Apple; it was a bunch of people. The building of the right team is an art in and of its own right.
D.A. Wallach
#33. I think there were some programs but in those days art programs were kind of basic. You would do drawing and simple collage type work. But at home I was beginning to get interested in doing my own thing as well. I'm not sure what inspired this, but I became very interested in decorating things.
Paul Smith
#34. Never mind what God is doing. What are you doing? That's called interspection.
Art Hochberg
#35. For me, acting is about the art of it and it's about being on a film set and doing your thing, painting a blank canvas.
Shailene Woodley
#36. What is the art world? I never really understood. I started doing this stuff to do what I want to do. Not to be this or that.
Urs Fischer
#37. Self-discovery is a very advanced art. What we're doing basically is screwing around with what you're made up of. We're taking awarenesses, feelings, ideas and impressions and changing them.
Frederick Lenz
#38. I am doing what I want to do - painting pictures people want and understand. I have no burning ambition to create the kind of 'art' which the confused critics praise for its 'plastic significance,' 'fluid lines,' and 'inner awareness,' or 'must be understood on three levels.
Arnold Friberg
#39. When you do not know what you are doing and what you are doing is the best
that is inspiration.
Robert Bresson
#40. Most of the books that I've adapted I'm doing because I love the book and I feel like it's a great work of art in itself, and when it's a great book I feel as a director or a writer that I have a responsibility to rise to the level of the original. It makes me try to reach higher.
James Franco
#41. Truth and reality in art begin at the point where the artist ceases to understand what he is doing and capable of doing - yet feels in himself a force that becomes steadily stronger ... and more concentrated.
Henri Matisse
#42. Truth is, I didn't know what the hell I was doing when I got out of Cal Arts. I think I wasted a lot of time not being bold enough, or still engaged in the questioning that you get into at school.
David Salle
#43. Artists today think of everything they do as a work of art. It is important to forget about what you are doing - then a work of art may happen.
Andrew Wyeth
#44. If you think art is a competitive forum, then you're going to stop doing it if you're not good. But if it's not competitive, it's something that you'll keep doing.
Zephyr Teachout
#45. 'The Next Wave' started as a drawing for a new silkscreen fine art print. I ended up doing the prints digitally because the water-based inks were better for the environment than the oil based inks. So, I learned about the Epson digital printers to get the image I wanted.
John Van Hamersveld
#46. People ask about art and commercialism. I think that if someone tries to sell their work at a high price, that is the wrong way of doing it.
Yayoi Kusama
#47. I'd been used to this idea of destructive performance art instead of a slick, good-sounding show. So, I became frustrated as I felt I'd been doing the shows wrong. That sucked.
Erika M. Anderson
#48. There was no point in doing art if you were going to be second-rate.
Christopher Bram
#49. I'm enough of an anarchist aesthetically, when it comes to art - I want people to be reading my stuff voluntarily. They should be doing it because they want to.
Nell Zink
#50. Happiness is a tricky business. It may not have as much to do with doing as it has to do with not doing.
Art Hochberg
#51. One of the things about the arts that is so important is that in the arts you discover the only way to learn how to do it is by doing it. You can't write by reading a book about it. The only way to learn how to write a book is to sit down and try to write a book
David McCullough
#52. I may not be much good at most things, but if I didn't have the pleasure of planning and installing shows, and doing it better than anyone else, I would have stopped buying art many years ago.
Charles Saatchi
#53. I enjoyed art in school. I've always done little drawings and stuff like that. I don't really know what I'm doing with the painting, but I experiment.
Alex Lifeson
#54. There's a temptation in our networked age to think that ideas can be developed by email and iChat. That's crazy. Creativity comes from spontaneous meetings, from random discussions. You run into someone, you ask what they're doing, you say 'wow,' and soon you're cooking up all sorts of ideas.
Steve Jobs
#55. My activism has to do with my conscience; I cannot let certain things slide without doing something. My public speaking is part of an art form that is cultural.
Lee Maracle
#56. An interesting thing happened in 1989, right as I was graduating: the stock market crashed and really changed the landscape of the art world in New York. It made the kind of work I was doing interesting to galleries that wouldn't have normally been interested in it.
Matthew Barney
#57. I can't think of a better rationale to create a work of art. I don't care what form one's art takes, it has to be an attempt to leave the world a better place than it was before we got here or it's not doing its job. And I don't mean just making things that are pretty.
Charles De Lint
#58. It's kind of not about the quality of the art, as much as this is what I love doing and I'd have a worse time doing anything else. That's kind of as far as I think in terms of philosophy.
Jonny Greenwood
#59. I recently read that it's the left brain that does all that calculating, and the right brain that does the poetry. Somehow I've veered way towards the left. I've been doing it for years. Maybe I do art to balance it out.
Jason Mraz
#60. I don't agree with the copyright laws and I don't have a problem with people downloading the movie and sharing it with people ... as long as they're not doing it to make a profit off my labor - You share things with people and I think information, and art, and ideas should be shared.
Michael Moore
#61. I'm either offered window-dressing parts in large movies or little art films no one ever sees. People think the movies I end up doing are my real choices. I do the best things I'm offered.
Jacqueline Bisset
#63. I've done art on my own, and I've also collaborated with other people to make art. And collaborating with other people is always interesting because you end up doing things you probably wouldn't do otherwise.
Kim Gordon
#64. If losing a fight is the worst thing that's ever happened to you in your life, you're doing pretty good.
Randy Couture
#65. I was so used to doing art that my fingers were like albino spiders. So it was just natural for me to go to a typewriter and write poetry.
Patti Smith
#66. Art never harms itself by keeping aloof from the social problems of the day: rather, by so doing, it more completely realises for us that which we desire.
Oscar Wilde
#67. I watched as he raised his hand to run a finger down my nose to my lips, then traced my mouth.
The feather-light touch made me shiver. "What are you doing?"
"I'm drawing you, so that I'll have you in my fingertips while you are gone.
Frances Watts
#68. Those who are concerned with the arts are often asked questions, not always sympathetic ones, about the use or value of what they are doing. It is probably impossible to answer such questions directly, or at any rate to answer the people who ask them.
Northrop Frye
#69. You cannot create a piece of art merely for money. Doing it as part of commerce so denudes art of wonder that it ceases to be art.
Seth Godin
#70. Most of the criticism of my work was pretty good, but occasionally it would not be. And I just sort of felt that they absolutely didn't get what I was doing. It was their limitations on what they thought art should be or what they thought my work should be in relation to earlier work or whatever.
Robert Barry
#71. I remember when I did 'Mrityudand' there was this big hoo-ha, and people were asking me why I was doing an art movie, and I would just tell them that, 'You know, what's the big deal, it's a movie.' I'm so glad that's a thing of the past.
Madhuri Dixit
#72. If you want to create something that's worth doing you have to self-edit from the get-go. You really must be careful and selective with whom you work, you must constantly ask yourself the hard questions about your art, and you must set a nearly unattainable standard for yourself.
John Dyer Baizley
#73. So there I was in Hollywood, thinking I was doing good.
Eric Clapton
#74. This is the art of rationalization, and we do it so often that some researchers believe that a majority of our time is spent rationalizing. That is, we go around much of the day lying to ourselves about why we are doing most of the things we do. When
Hugh Howey
#75. About one or two songs per record is me doing a little bloodletting.
Art Alexakis
#76. People say if you're doing an art project, that's different from a book, but I honestly don't see it. I try and try, and I just don't.
Douglas Coupland
#77. Any work of art makes one very simple demand on anyone who genuinely wants to get in touch with it. And that is to stop. You've got to stop what you're doing, what you're thinking, and what you're expecting and just be there for the poem for however long it takes.
W.S. Merwin
#78. When you recite you're giving a performance, in the way that an actor or a singer performs, and some poets are not interested in doing that, maybe because they're writing for a readership as opposed to an audience, or because they see poetry as a very private art.
James Arthur
#79. NEXT LIFE. My embroidery studio on the main street of Bayeux will be just one part of my Institute of Slow Information. I will also teach letter writing, listening, miniature portrait painting, and the art of doing one thing at a time.
Vivian Swift
#80. The exciting thing about doing art for someone else's story is how I can translate their world through pictures, and that's always a pretty big challenge.
Tony DiTerlizzi
#81. Improvisation is the art of being completely O.K. with not knowing what the f - you're doing
Mick Napier
#82. Sometimes I have compared myself with a scientist or something: when you discover something and you don't expect the whole world to understand it. I always thought I was doing that kind of activity, in art and in music too.
Yoko Ono
#83. From the very early stage when I started doing performance art in the '70s, the general attitude - not just me, but also my colleagues - was that there should not be any documentation, that the performance itself is artwork and there should be no documentation.
Marina Abramovic
#84. Don't know which one is worse, doing your own thing or just being cool.
Bob Dylan
#85. Writers have the purity of their art and what they want to achieve with that, and that this purity is bound up with the messy material conditions of trying to make a living while doing that work.
Chad Harbach
#86. I have no idea where I'm going but here's the real question: What am I doing here in the first place?
Art Buchwald
#87. Art is something that opens up and enhances your emotions and that's what I like to think I'm doing.
Nile Rodgers
#88. Truth and reality in art do not arise until you no longer understand what you are doing and are capable of but nevertheless sense a power that grows in proportion to your resistance.
Henri Matisse
#89. I think most producers and MCs are constantly in this competition, but it's usually with yourself. It's usually wanting to be innovative: wanting to catch yourself when you're doing the same thing or throwing out the same art you've already done.
Ryan Lewis
#90. Art is the beautiful way of doing things. Science is the effective way of doing things. Business is the economic way of doing things.
Elbert Hubbard
#91. People think that computer science is the art of geniuses but the actual reality is the opposite, just many people doing things that build on eachother, like a wall of mini stones.
Donald Knuth
#92. I'm a real person that cares about his art and cares about what he's doing. I have a heart and a soul and I want to touch people and give.
LL Cool J
#93. The thing about architecture is that it's an art [you] simply learn more by doing more. It's one of those things that is really not an art about thinking, but doing. So in a way, what it has done is greatly intensify the way that I build.
David Adjaye
#95. Today when a man gets married he gets a home, a housekeeper, a cook, a cheering squad and another paycheck. When a woman marries, she gets a boarder. To define it rudely but not ineptly, engineering is the art of doing that well with one dollar, which any bungler can do with two after a fashion.
Duke Of Wellington
#96. I liked drawing and painting, because the only failure would be to listen to the doubters who wanted me to stop drawing and painting because 'you aren't going to make a living doing that.' I liked looking in art books at the work of painters.
Billy Childish
#97. I was doing these performance art pop music pieces in the city. And they were a bit on the eccentric side I suppose. So people started to call me Gaga after the Queen song 'Radio Gaga.'
Lady Gaga
#98. When you come up in the art world, whatevers in the air, the issues of the moment, end up becoming part of the working method or modus operandi of how you think about doing a painting. And I came up at a time when-actually painting was dead when I came up. Sculpture sort of ruled.
Chuck Close
#99. It is necessary to meditate early, and often, on the art of dying to succeed later in doing it properly just once.
Umberto Eco
#100. Sometimes, being different feels a lot like being alone. But with that being said, being true to that and being true to my standards and my way of doing things in my art and my music, everything that has made me feel very different ... in the end, it has made me the happiest.
Lindsey Stirling
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