Top 100 Quotes About Not An Artist
#1. I think R. Kelly's range is so vast and broad that in order to stimulate himself creatively as an artist, he has to step so, so far outside the box, or else he feels like he's not challenging himself.
T.I.
#2. The problem was Le Corbusier was a genius and an enormous artist, but he tried to resolve problems to which there is no solution. So the idea to demolish the centre of Paris in order to adapt it to the car - he drew it! - is something not even the most bloody dictators conceived.
Leon Krier
#3. A man becomes creative, whether he is an artist or scientist, when he finds a new unity in the variety of nature. He does so by finding a likeness between things which were not thought alike before.
Jacob Bronowski
#4. Evolution is not an even process. There are surges, and there are micromoments. Certainly a career as an artist is that way.
Eileen Myles
#5. An artist should write for himself & not for an audience. If the audience likes it, great. If not, they can keep away.
Artie Shaw
#6. I shouldn't be held responsible for my acts, since I was a political idiot, an artist who could not distinguish between reality and dreams
Kurt Vonnegut
#7. I don't want to just be an actor my whole life. I mean I do want to be an actor my whole life but not only an actor, I want to be an artist.
Ansel Elgort
#8. I like the idea that paintings are not representations of an artist's psyche. Making the paintings is what gives the artist her psyche in the first place.
Shea Hembrey
#9. I'd never compare myself to Freddie Mercury because I look up to him far too much. As an artist, not necessarily as a person.
Mika.
#10. The teacher, like the artist and the philosopher, can perform his work adequately only if he feels himself to be an individual directed by an inner creative impulse, not dominated and fettered by an outside authority.
Bertrand Russell
#11. 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
#12. An artist can respect the backfield of fact before which every human being stands and choose not to address those facts.
Tom Bissell
#13. My grandfather was not a musician but he was an artist - a painter, a decorative painter.
Gyorgy Ligeti
#14. But I'm not an artist. Maybe an artist with a small a.
John Galliano
#15. 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.
K'naan
#16. If the newspapers cut me up so much that I shall not venture before the world again, I have resolved to become a house painter; that would be as easy as anything else, and I should, at any rate, still be an artist!
Frederic Chopin
#17. An artist who wants to transpose a composition onto a larger canvas must conceive it over again in order to preserve its expression; he must alter its character and not just fill in the squares into which he has divided his canvas.
Henri Matisse
#18. To retain his dignity, an artist must live in opposition. He must be critical of his country. If not, then he is worthless.
Bruno Dumont
#19. I'm a guy who had to perform some way. I had to perform in some way. If not as an actor, I'd perform as an artist. It would have been something that would be outstanding in its own way.
Jack Kirby
#20. 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
#21. The usual criticism of a novel about an artist is that, no matter how real he is as a man, he is not real to us as an artist, since we have to take on trust the works of art he produces.
Randall Jarrell
#22. I'm not an industry artist - I'm an artist in the industry.
DMX
#23. Something was still there, that something that distinguishes an artist from a performer: the revealing of self. Here I be. Not forlong, but here I be. In sensing her mortality, we sensed our own.
Studs Terkel
#24. 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
#25. An artist might be attracted to hedonism, but of course an artist is not a hedonist. He's a worker, always.
David Hockney
#26. THIS ACTION THAT I FORESEE
has nothing to do with melodrama
It is that life as lived by me now is a series of exceptions
I was (am?) not unique but special.
This is why I was an artist
Francesca Woodman
#27. The attempt to divide art and politics is a bourgeois which says good poetry, art, cannot be political, but since everything is ... political, even an artist or work that claims not to have any politics is making a political statement by that act.
Amiri Baraka
#28. I'm not trying to say I'm this artist who is all artsy and that I only write music for myself, because I don't. I write music for other people to enjoy, so I think about if it'd be an idea someone else would like.
Conrad Sewell
#29. One of the things I love about doing things that are creative is that I feel like it's my right as an artist not to be affected by the reactions of those people that are going to hear my songs.
Zooey Deschanel
#30. Oh my God, everyday is a constant struggle and battle. Especially with an artist like me, when what I am doing is not the in thing, it is harder to break someone like me. And I'm a woman too, it's ridiculous.
Syleena Johnson
#31. An artists job is to see. And to go out in the world and see it firsthand, just as it is; to report with line and words what is seen. To be in the world, not just study about the world, that is the artists task
Robert Fulghum
#32. I think it's part of the responsibility of an artist to shock, to upset, to make people think differently, and to surprise people. And that's where the good humor is, if there's a surprise and there's something unexpected. Something that's not normal, not in the realm of general living expectations.
Bill Plympton
#33. I'm not an artist that strays away from my fans. Nah, everybody is open to come and talk to me respectfully and I'm going to give them the same respect.
Raekwon
#34. Putting out commercial pieces and promoting them and trying to sell them to people is not necessarily what it means to be an artist.
Sean Lennon
#35. One of the things he liked about playwriting as to any other kind of writing is that a playwright is a w-r-i-g-h-t, not a w-r-i-t-e; in other words, that a playwright is more of a craftsman than an artist of the big novel.
Simon McBurney
#36. I watch artists say they wrote all these songs and don't mention anybody else who was involved, and that's fine. I don't expect an artist to give me credit. I know that they're gonna take the credit for everything. But, it's my job to give myself that exposure and not make excuses, not grow bitter.
Rico Love
#37. Love is such a grace as we know not how to be without. A soldier may as well be without his weapons, an artist without his pencil, a musician without his instrument, as a Christian can be without love.
Thomas Watson
#38. If you wanna be an artist carry sketch pad with you, and sketch everything you see. Get so you can draw anything and it looks like what it's supposed to be. It's a lot of work, but if you really have it in you, it's not like work. It becomes fun.
Stan Lee
#39. Creatively, I'd like to achieve not only being an artist, but being a businessman and having my own music home.
Anthony Hamilton
#40. Why should I need an artist to explain a work of art to me? Why should it not speak out to me itself?
Mahatma Gandhi
#41. I learned three things in Zurich during the war. I wrote them down. Firstly, you're either a revolutionary or you're not, and if you're not you might as well be an artist as anything else. Secondly, if you can't be an artist, you might as well be a revolutionary ... I forget the third thing.
Tom Stoppard
#42. An artist must have his measuring tools not in the hand, but in the eye.
Michelangelo
#43. I am an artist because the knot is so powerful I just can not, nor want to be, anything else or do anything else.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
#44. 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.
Gerard Way
#45. I never put myself in that box of you're an Oscar winner so you can only do this or that. That's one award, one night, and it does not define my career or it does not define me as an artist. I never wanted to get put in that Oscar box because that's a lonely place to be.
Halle Berry
#46. It's not what you do, it's the way you do it that makes you an artist. Whatever you do do it with all your heart. Be what you are Be creative!
Denny Dent
#47. As an artist, I do not need to be rich but I do need to be richly supported. I cannot allow my emotional and intellectual life to stagnate or the work will show it. My life will show it.
Julia Cameron
#48. If the photographer is not a discoverer, then he is not an artist.
Paul Strand
#49. 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
#50. As an artist, you're always somewhat obscure. We're not talking Hollywood.
Christian Marclay
#51. I didn't grow up in a naked household, but nudity was not a taboo thing. My mother was an artist and there were naked sculptures and paintings all over the place.
Ingrid Michaelson
#52. An artist is a prophet and seer, not a paint craftsman or design maker, or reporter or entertainer ... the artist has the superiorly searching perception with which that world outside of man's contamination can be penetrated and the truth drawn out from it.
Morris Graves
#54. I'm not going to talk about Picasso. I have done my duty to those memories. I have had a great career as an artist myself, you know. I'm not here just because I've spent time with Picasso.
Francoise Gilot
#55. Many of the artists are not pretending to have an objective point of view. They're revealing the subjectivity.
Massimiliano Gioni
#56. To me, what makes an artist is a unique personality that they're not afraid to let show.
Blake Shelton
#57. I went out of my way to try not to be an artist, because I thought I would end up leading a miserable, obscure life. I tried to escape it for as long as I could, until I had to admit at 25 that that was my path.
Sam Taylor-Wood
#58. My real background was in art studies. At the beginning I was a painter, then I was this graphic designer, then I became an illustrator, then I was a comic artist. But for me it's a different way of expression, a different field of art. They're not separated; everything for me is related.
Marjane Satrapi
#59. Painting, art in general, enchants me. It is my life. What else matters? When you put all your soul into a work, all that is noble in you, you cannot fail to find a kindred soul who understands you, and you do not need a host of such spirits. Is not that all an artist should wish for?
Camille Pissarro
#60. 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
#61. 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
#62. Prior to my father's death, I was having a hard time committing to a career as an artist, but that's not because of who he was - it was because of who I am. It's true, though, that I felt I shouldn't compete with him, and that those feelings went away after he died.
Kiki Smith
#63. A musician, an artist, an architect: the man or woman who is not one of these is not a Christian.
William Blake
#64. Leave me to die a lonely death.
An artist's death.
A writer's playground.
A painter's background.
A philosopher's bread and butter.
An endeavor that we
all face. I just hope that
I'm not the only one
there.
A.P. Sweet
#65. To many people Michael Jackson seems an elusive personality, but to those who work with him, he is not. This talented artist is a sensitive man, warm, funny, and full of insight. Michael's book 'Moonwalk', provides a startling glimpse of the artist at work and the artist in reflection.
Jackie Kennedy
#66. I'm not a writer, but today I think you have to be everything. As an artist you have an obligation to let people know what is on your mind and why you're doing this.
Ai Weiwei
#67. 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
#68. For the life of me, I'll never understand how you can be an artist but not want people to understand who you are as a person.
Blake Shelton
#69. Being an artist is not only what you do, but how you live your life.
Ben Shahn
#70. Nothing can come out of an artist that is not in the man.
H.L. Mencken
#71. You will not always be happy but I guarantee it that you will always be lucky as an artist when you least expect it.
Abigail George
#72. I am not a follower of Monet. I am not an admirer or follower of De Kooning. I am not an action painter. I am not an abstract expressionist. I am not younger or older. I will not take my hat off to any other artist living or dead in all the world. I know this.
Milton Resnick
#73. As for the industry, it has certainly changed. I think with all of these television shows and YouTube and the internet, you have so much less time to develop as an artist and perfect your craft. So many things today are "instant" and, that's not always a good thing.
Olivia Newton-John
#74. An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's.
J.D. Salinger
#75. I had to figure out what to make for myself as an artist. As a producer you make stuff for all kinds of different people. I was making beats for other artists but not for myself. It was kind of weird.
Kid Ink
#76. 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
#77. I'm not looking to be an artist to make money. I'm looking to be an artist.
Ester Dean
#78. I'm an artist; I do not destroy, but create scars. And above that, I am an inventor of new ways to create them.
Hillary Wen, Hildy Wen
#79. Hubris itself will not let you be an artist.
Larry Wall
#80. The idea that a poem was a made thing stayed with me, and I decided then that I wanted to be an artist, not just a diarist. So I put myself through a kind of apprenticeship in writing poetry, and I understood even then that my practice as a poet was deeply related to my reading.
Edward Hirsch
#81. Being an artist is supposed to be a scam, not a career.
Wade Guyton
#82. The practise of an art is essential to the whole man, not because of what art is but because of what art does to the artist.
John Fowles
#84. 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
#85. I am not an artist. I am a craftsman.
Fritz Lang
#86. I have to create an object which resembles the tree. The sign for a tree, and not the sign that other artists may have found for the tree.
Henri Matisse
#87. As an artist, you need to be not at all entitled in your relation with the work. So money is kind of worrying. You can start to expect things if you're used to a certain level of comfort.
Eleanor Catton
#88. Music definitely gave me a focus. I was an artist without an outlet. Let's just say if I was not famous, I could have been infamous. I could've had my own episode of 'American Gangster.'
CeeLo Green
#89. The artist must scorn all judgment that is not based on an intelligent observation of character. He must beware of the literary spirit which so often causes a painting to deviate from its true path - the concrete study of nature - to lose itself all too long in intangible speculations.
Paul Cezanne
#90. One thing is certain, anyone who collects art is not an artist.
Heinrich Boll
#91. 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
#92. 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
#93. In an artist's life, death is perhaps not the most difficult thing.
Vincent Van Gogh
#94. I'm growing as an artist and expanding my range, and not pigeonholing myself by doing the same thing, over and over.
Sarah Wayne Callies
#95. The degree of talent, the size of the gift, is immaterial. All artists must listen, but not all hear great symphonies, see wide canvasses, conceive complex, character-filled novels. No
matter, the creative act is the same, and it is an act of faith.
Madeleine L'Engle
#96. I love playing instruments that I don't know how to play or am not familiar with. I like the idea of danger and innocence that comes from it. As an artist, I feel I should be able to do something with anything I get my hands on. The music becomes minimalist because of my limited knowledge.
Gustavo Santaolalla
#97. You start to become successful, and everybody starts to drive your money train to the bank, and they're not thinking anymore about what you want as an artist or if any of that even matters to you. It genuinely upsets people in my life that I don't care about money, and that's not my problem.
Lady Gaga
#98. 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
#99. You are not an artist simply because you paint or sculpt or make pots that cannot be used. An artist is a poet in his or her own medium. And when an artist produces a good piece, that work has mystery, an unsaid quality; it is alive.
Toshiko Takaezu
#100. The artist's mission must not be to produce an irrefutable solution to a problem, but to compel us to love life in all its countless and inexhaustible manifestations.
Leo Tolstoy
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