Quotes About Expression

Color is only beautiful when it means something.

Genius is not a possession of the limited few, but exists in some degree in everyone. Where there is natural growth, a full and free play of faculties, genius will manifest itself.

A common defect of modern art study is that too many students do not know why they draw.

Art is the giving by each man of his evidence to the world. Those who wish to give, love to give, discover the pleasure of giving. Those who give are tremendously strong.

A GREAT PAINTER will know a great deal about how he did it, but still he will say, "How did I do it?" The real artist's work is a surprise to himself.

In every human being there is the artist, and whatever his activity, he has an equal chance with any to express the result of his growth and his contact with life. I don't believe any real artist cares whether what he does is 'art' or not. Who, after all, knows what art is?

Pretend you are dancing or singing a picture. A worker or painter should enjoy his work, else the observer will not enjoy it.

A work of art is the trace of a magnificent struggle.

An artist must have imagination. An artist who does not use his imagination is a mechanic.

What we need is more sense of the wonder of life and less of this business of making a picture.

Because we are saturated with life, because we are human, our strongest motive is life, humanity; and the stronger the motive back of the line the stronger, and therefore more beautiful, the line will be.

I have no sympathy with the belief that art is the restricted province of those who paint, sculpt, make music and verse. I hope we will come to an understanding that the material used is only incidental, that there is artist in every man; and that to him the possibility of development and of expression and the happiness of creation is as much a right and as much a duty to himself, as to any of those who work in the especially ticketed ways.

Be game--take a chance--don't hide behind veils and veils of discretion... Go forward with what you have to say, expressing things as you see them. You are new evidence, fresh and young. Your work, the spirit of youth, you are the progress of human evolution. If age dulls you it will be time enough then to be ponderous and heavy--or quit. It takes a tremendous amount of courage to be young, to continue growing--not to settle and accept.

A man must be master of himself and master of his word to achieve the full realization of himself as an artist.

In great art there is no beginning and end in point of time. All time is comprehended.

Those who express even a little of themselves never become old-fashioned.

I have heard it very often said that an artist does not need intelligence, that his is the province of the soul

There are people who buy pictures because they were difficult to do, and are done. Such pictures are often only a record of pain and dull perseverance. Great works of art should look as though they were made in joy. Real joy is a tremendous activity, dull drudgery is nothing to it.

Get the few main lines and see what lines they call out.

The more simply you see, the more simply you will render. People see too much, scatteringly.

Art is certainly not a pursuit for anyone who wants to make money.

Some one has defined a work of art as a "thing beautifully done." I like it better if we cut away the adverb and preserve the word "done," and let it stand alone in its fullest meaning. Things are not done beautifully. The beauty is an integral part of their being done.

The object is not to make art, but to be in the wonderful state which makes art inevitable.

If a certain activity, such as painting, becomes the habitual mode of expression, it may follow that taking up the painting materials and beginning work with them will act suggestively and so presently evoke a flight into the higher state.