Artistic temperament is the disease that afflicts amateurs.
Gilbert K. Chesterton

The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.
Michelangelo 1475 - 1564

Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow that talent to the dark place where it leads.
Erica Jong

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.
Aristotle

When I have a terrible need of - shall I say the word - religion. Then I go out and paint the stars.
Vincent Van Gogh

Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.
Groucho Marx

My favourite poem is the one that starts 'Thirty days hath September' because it actually tells you something.
Groucho Marx

To use books rightly is to go to them for help.
Ruskin

Well, Art is Art, isn't it? Still, on the other hand, water is water. And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now you tell me what you know.
Groucho Marx

Music can change the world because it can change people.
Bono

I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork.
Peter de Vries

It takes a long time to become young.
Pablo Picasso

Copy from one, it's plagiarism; copy from two, it's research.
Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)

I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying. Woody Allen (1935-)

Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.
Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
Antoine de Saint Exupery

Basically, I no longer work for anything but the sensation I have while working.
Albert Giacometti (sculptor)

Talent does what it can; genius does what it must.
Edward George Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873)

Dancing is silent poetry.
Simonides (556-468bc)

This book fills a much-needed gap.
Moses Hadas (1900-1966)

I don't have to think I am a great painter, but I need to feel that what I seek is a great painting - that any moment the canvas could come alive and become a beautiful picture. 
Gregg Kreutz  

If you could say it in words there would be no reason to paint.
Edward Hopper

Painting: The art of protecting canvas surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critics.
Ambrose Bierce

There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept.
Ansel Adams

Every morning when I wake up, I experience an exquisite joy — the joy of being Salvador Dalí — and I ask myself in rapture, ‘What wonderful things is this Salvador Dalí going to accomplish today?
Salvador Dalí

I always thought that one of the reasons why a painter likes especially to have other painters look at his or her work is the shared experience of having pushed paint around
Chuck Close

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.
Francis Bacon

To touch the soul of another human being is to walk on holy ground.
Stephen R. Covey

Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.
Jonathon Swift

Good art is not what it looks like, but what it does to us.
Roy Adzak

The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without the work.
Emile Zola

The secret of life is in art.
Oscar Wilde

I spent many years laughing at Harry Secombe's singing until somebody told me that it wasn't a joke
Spike Milligan

I know that to paint the sea really well, you need to look at it every hour of every day in the same place so that you can understand its way in that particular spot and that is why I am working on the same motifs over and over again, four or six times even.
Claude Monet

Architecture is inhabited sculpture.
Constantin Brancusi

The terrifying and edible beauty of Art Nouveau architecture.
Salvador Dalí

A work of art is not a matter of thinking beautiful thoughts or experiencing tender emotions (though those are its raw materials), but of intelligence, skill, taste, proportion, knowledge, discipline and industry; especially discipline.
Evelyn Waugh

All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he or she grows up.
Pablo Picasso

Art is a tart!

Art is anything you can get away with.
Marshall McLuhan

It is only the unimaginative who ever invents. The true artist is known by the use he makes of what he annexes.
Oscar Wilde

Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes.
Oscar Wilde

The secret of creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
Albert Einstein

I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.
Groucho Marx 1890-1977

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all art and science. Albert Einstein

Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called 'Ego'.
Friedrich Nietzsche

The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time. Friedrich Nietzsche

Those who can do, those who can't teach.
George Bernard Shaw 1856-1950

A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
Mark Twain 1835-1920

There are only two styles of portrait painting; the serious and the smirk.
Charles Dickens 1812-1870

Dancing: The vertical expression of a horizontal desire legalized by music.
George Bernard Shaw 1856-1950

Fame usually comes to those who are thinking about something else.
Oliver Wendell Holmes 1809-1894

Believe in drawing as a way of developing an understanding of and an appreciation for the physical world rather than as an end in itself.
Ruskin






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-----Wildlife Artist, Pet Portrait Artist and Natural History Illustrator

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----------------------All Artwork, Images & Content © Susan Shimeld. 2002. All rights reserved.