Top 100 Maisel Quotes
#1. Art and business may be strange bedfellows, but an artist must make room in her bed for both.
Eric Maisel
#2. Had I not been told to look, I would have quite, ignorant of what was really there, because I had 'made plans' and was wearing visual and emotional blinders that limited my perceptions and my vision.
Jay Maisel
#3. We can carve time out of thin air, or we can fill up even infinite stretches of time with nothingness. These are our choices.
Eric Maisel
#4. The artist at her best - wild, passionate, rebellious, and human - is often too large and truthful a creature for society's taste. The artist at her most outlandish - profane, eccentric, even a little mad - is at least as disquieting a figure.
Eric Maisel
#5. Rekindling hope, engaging in inner work, and venturing into the world amount to a complete plan for picking yourself up when you're down.
Eric Maisel
#6. Creativity is not a talent or ability. It is the fruit of a person's decision to matter.
Eric Maisel
#7. One color alone means nothing. I acts as in a vacuum, with no other colors to relate to. It is only when colors relate to other colors that the fun begins.
Jay Maisel
#8. Sometimes without shooting a picture germinates in your head. Other times, you keep taking pictures of the same thing and watch the images mature and grow.
Jay Maisel
#9. Money and fame that photography can bring you are wonderful, but nothing can compare to the joy of seeing something new.
Jay Maisel
#10. The artist must possess at least as much conviction as does his enemy, the dogmatic, mealy-mouthed, anti-art bigot.
Eric Maisel
#11. Every picture should have a place you can go, a home, a climax.
Jay Maisel
#12. Creativity is part sweat - not just beads of it, but sometimes buckets.
Eric Maisel
#13. All these factors are only valuable if you're curious. But in any case, the more knowledge you have, the more things are open and available to you.
Jay Maisel
#14. While it may feel natural to devote yourself to your creative work and succumb to feelings of separation and alienation, it nevertheless isn't a terrific idea in terms of your overall happiness and health.
Eric Maisel
#15. The more sophisticated we become - as we pierce reality and see the void beyond - the more our sense of wonder is destroyed, along with our reasons for being.
Eric Maisel
#16. We have enough experiences in a day to make art for a decade.
Eric Maisel
#17. An alive piece of art may be more alive than much of its audience, and with this odd truth artists must make peace.
Eric Maisel
#18. Remember that most people (those who are not photographers) don't even see the things that you missed. Many don't even look. Ergo, you are way ahead of the game.
Jay Maisel
#19. The artist who pictures sounds as colours, who feels the difference in microns between one sea green and another ... is not attending to what the world considers important.
Eric Maisel
#20. All space is space in which to create.
Eric Maisel
#21. Because she favours solitude and indwelling, an artist can live a significantly more claustrophobic life that she had ever intended.
Eric Maisel
#22. You are responsible for every part of your image, even the parts you're not interested in.
Jay Maisel
#23. You can sweat by not practicing or you can pick up your clarinet. There's good sweat and there's bad sweat.
Eric Maisel
#24. I am a human being and an artist: I really, simply, surely am.
Eric Maisel
#25. Creativity requires introspection, self-examination, and a willingness to take risks. Because of this, artists are perhaps more susceptible to self-doubt and despair than those who do not court the creative muses.
Eric Maisel
#26. You cannot accurately remember color ...
Jay Maisel
#27. Some have said that if you take a great picture in color and take away the color, you'll have a great black-and-white picture. But if you're shooting something about color and you take away the color, you'll have nothing.
Jay Maisel
#28. Artists are often poignantly careless about making and keeping friends.
Eric Maisel
#29. An artist must struggle to accept the shape of this universe - and achieve some important successes ...
Eric Maisel
#30. Boredom is the thing that regularly arrives between excitements and episodes of meaning: it is as natural as the tides, and in it an artist can drown.
Eric Maisel
#31. Sometimes as you work, you find that you are learning things about your own perceptions and motivations that are way below you consciousness. If you get lucky, you recognize what you are doing, but all too often we don't find the connection between our work and our own motivations.
Jay Maisel
#32. Color is seductive. It changes as it interacts with other colors, it changes because of the light falling upon it, and it changes as it becomes larger in size.
Jay Maisel
#33. It's always around. You just don't see it.
Jay Maisel
#34. It's my obligation to take out all the 'wrong' pictures.
Jay Maisel
#35. Make creativity your religion ... because creating is soulful work.
Eric Maisel
#36. Failing is not a problem. Not trying is a problem.
Jay Maisel
#37. If you're just going to meet consumer or clients' demands, you might as well be a plumber - the work will be more frequently available.
Jay Maisel
#38. When the artist activates his being, awakens to his surroundings, and sets himself the task of creating, connections are made out of conscious awareness that return coalesced as inspiration.
Eric Maisel
#39. The artist dreams of works of real breadth; but, limited by his personality and the nature of his medium, limited by inner disturbances and loss of purpose, he often works more narrowly than he'd intended.
Eric Maisel
#40. Ambition is vital, but dangerous: it is a keen motive and a driving force, but over what edge can it drive the artist?
Eric Maisel
#41. It is the job of each artist to believe in the possibility of meaningful, substantial, and sustainable change.
Eric Maisel
#42. If there is a soul, then it is a mistake to think that it is given to us completely created. It is created right here for a lifetime. Life is nothing but a long, painful process of creation.
Eric Maisel
#43. If, because of anxiety and self-doubt, you procrastinate and only think about working, you'll feel more exhausted than if you'd created for hours.
Eric Maisel
#44. An artist ... must actively caress wonder: for fascination, like the desire to play, can be eradicated by the rigors of living.
Eric Maisel
#45. Be aware of every square millimeter of your frame.
Jay Maisel
#46. There's one of the great lies of all times, that computers save time. They don't. They're time suckers. So, I'm trying not to get involved in the Photoshop.
Jay Maisel
#47. It's a lot easier to take pictures if you always have the camera with you.
Jay Maisel
#48. Hurray for criticism, if it means that an artist's voice is heard. Let the wise artist invite criticism and survive it when it comes.
Eric Maisel
#49. The artist can't paint, sing, or dance without emotion: if he does, he is a machine masquerading as a person.
Eric Maisel
#50. The artist's task is to become a successful eccentric, a strange but wise duck able to venture out of solitary confinement and mingle among society.
Eric Maisel
#51. The artist, busy and unsettled, can find a moment's peace - and even whole-being rejuvenation - by quietly attuning to a red sky, a gray sky, a black sky, a blue sky.
Eric Maisel
#52. You can't just turn on when something happens, you have to be turned on all the time. Then things happen.
Jay Maisel
#53. If you're not your own severest critic, you are your own worst enemy.
Jay Maisel
#54. The composition is already there, you just need to crop it
Jay Maisel
#55. As people, we love pattern. But interrupted pattern is more interesting.
Jay Maisel
#56. We have always wanted to find the 'it-ness' of anything we shoot. We want to get as deep into the subject as we can.
Jay Maisel
#57. Don't overthink things in front of you. I fit moves you, shoot it. If it's fun, shoot it. If you've never seen it before, shoot it.
Jay Maisel
#58. Artists disbelieve and dispute society's most cherished notions.
Eric Maisel
#59. Our desire is to grow so quiet and to work so deeply that we participate fully in the mystery in which we're embedded. When we manage to do that we feel as if we have merged with the universe; for the duration of that experience we feel immortal.
Eric Maisel
#61. It is in an artist's real interest to congratulate herself more often: not out of narcissism, but in her role as her own dear friend and advocate.
Eric Maisel
#62. Since the background is as important as the subject, you mustn't let it default by chance. You must control not only vertical and horizontal, you must be aware of the depth of field (or lack of it) that you want in the background.
Jay Maisel
#63. No muse shoots darts of insight into the unsuspecting artist.
Eric Maisel
#64. An artist's fine goal is to manifest a well-nigh heroic self-discipline, carefully attending to all that concerns him.
Eric Maisel
#65. Creativity is the gift that keeps on giving.
Eric Maisel
#66. You must be open to what otherwise may seem to be a detriment to your 'plans'.
Jay Maisel
#67. I take pictures, and they are there for the taking. I'll tell you a quote that I have always thought about. Arthur Miller said, I try to create the poem from the evidence.
Jay Maisel
#68. The artist, who must venture into the studio and risk there, and then venture into the marketplace and risk again, is obliged to learn how her defences work, so that she can drop and raise her guard instantly.
Eric Maisel
#70. It's important to realize that the images are everywhere, not just where you want or expect them to be.
Jay Maisel
#71. First, perseverance trumps talent. Second, do what you want to do, otherwise why bother? Third, be ethical; it might rub off on others. Fourth, don't give up.
Jay Maisel
#72. It is the artist's job to revere beauty without being enchanted by it, to aim for it but also to aim for truth and goodness - just in case they, and not beauty, are the real things of value.
Eric Maisel
#73. Many people are embarrassed to create in public. It feels unseemly to them, like kissing in plain view ... Make a spectacle of yourself.
Eric Maisel
#74. When you flow like water you bring all of your talents and resources to your creative work ... Flow around every obstacle you encounter, including any you've erected yourself.
Eric Maisel
#75. There is no bad light. There is spectacular light and difficult light. It's up to you to use the light you have.
Jay Maisel
#76. A photographer's art is more in his perceptions than his execution. In a painter, I think the perception is only the first step, and then you have a kind of hard road of execution.
Jay Maisel
#77. An inability to choose is a hallmark of anxiety ... The too-anxious artist, afraid to choose, will halt dead in the water.
Eric Maisel
#78. To obsess too virulently is to walk alone in anxiety. But to obsess too little is to wall oneself off from one's own creativity.
Eric Maisel
#79. The strange, unbeautiful face beautiful in its ugliness; the perfect, beautiful face ugly in its perfection.
Eric Maisel
#80. By 'expecting nothing' you are not 'giving up.' Far from it! You are making a decision to focus on what needs to be done rather than on outcomes.
Eric Maisel
#81. You must not think of yourself as looking at the stage from the audience. You must think of it as theatre in the round and look at it from all sides.
Jay Maisel
#82. The three elements of creativity are thus: loving, knowing, and doing - or heart, mind, and hands - or, as Zen Buddhist teaching has it; great faith, great question, and great courage.
Eric Maisel
#83. There are an infinite number of rewards you could bestow on yourself for working at your creative projects, and you deserve every one of them.
Eric Maisel
#84. Never put lettering in your photos unless you want it read.
Jay Maisel
#85. Let each of us dream of a community of artists and work to make that dream a reality.
Eric Maisel
#86. If you are out there shooting, things will happen for you. If you're not out there, you'll only hear about it.
Jay Maisel
#87. Always shoot it now. It won't be the same when you go back.
Jay Maisel
#88. One visit with a child can supply us with enough creativity dust to last for a lifetime ... Visit with children like you're the child you ought to be more often.
Eric Maisel
#89. Keenly aware of their limitations, artists often remain insecure even as their list of successes grows.
Eric Maisel
#90. An ability to choose is a necessity for the artist.
Eric Maisel
#91. A creative block is a fear about the future, a guess about the dangers dwelling in the dark computer and the locked studio.
Eric Maisel
#92. The artist's personality, built upon strong desires and compassionate vision, is by its nature prone to depression.
Eric Maisel
#93. I'm a New Yorker. I don't believe in air unless I can see it.
Jay Maisel
#94. The result may be important but it's not the actual measure. The measure is the feeling you have made contact with something.
Eric Maisel
#95. Deconstruction is great for the intellect, but it hurts the heart terribly.
Eric Maisel
#96. I love when pictures ask questions or make others ask questions.
Jay Maisel
#97. The artist ... may suppose that ideas are his chief currency; but unless he is also attuned to feelings, in life and in art, he will not move his fellow human beings.
Eric Maisel
#98. You need minimum color for maximum effect.
Jay Maisel
#99. Never say you're going back - SHOOT IT NOW!
Jay Maisel
#100. Creativity is the marriage humanity makes with eternity.
Eric Maisel
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