Paul Thoughts:       These random scrawlings below are my most primitive thoughts. They are in no particular order and some of them contradict eachother. Most of them I thought on my own. That is to say they are my quotes. Any that are not my own are duely credited..

Each painting contains a part of the moment that is difficult to appreciate while you are in that moment. They become easier to appreciate as time passes into the future, when the moment is long gone.

Culture is a plot to thwart the expansion of consciousness- Terrence Mckenna

Everyone has their own hidden, special kind of intelligence, no matter how dumb you might think they are.

Confidence is vital but self-satisfaction is fatal.

Art hates a vacuum, so go out there and fill some space.

I am an actor in a lifetime role as an artist.

Artists are not made in academies or institutions, they are destroyed there.

I believe in irreverence and abandon in art.

The artist must free himself from technical constraints and preconceptions while allowing himself to trust impulse.

Art is free, but it is not inexpensive.

An artist must find his own process, starting from scratch. There are no short cuts. One must find their own personal "art history".

Great art gets better over time. Bad art gets worse.

Paintings are like people. Sometimes it takes a while to understand them, sometimes you understand them right away, and sometimes you never understand them at all.

Painters are driven to paint like a spider is driven to build a web.

It is ok to be a bad artist, but there is nothing worse than a bad, lazy artist.

Everything is subject to change.

Painting is an abreviation of nature.

You dont have to know what you are doing, you just have to know how to go about not knowing what you are doing.

Everyone has the capacity for greatness, One just has to put the right kinds of pressures on one's self.

Fear of insignificance is a great motivator.

Look at Gauguin and Cezanne and all of the surly painters of time!

Painting is primarily a temperamental thing.

Temper and mood help the artist calibrate and make use of his feelings.

The temperament of a painter requires that one must be in touch with one's feelings as well as be out of touch with one's feelings.

Great painters are this way.

Everyone has a personality that is perfectly suited for something. They just have to find out what it is!

Picasso said: "I dont seek, I find!" Trip out on that for awhile.

To be excellent one must constantly examine one's own insecurities and weaknesses.

Everyone's greatness is their own unique experience.

A great way to learn how to paint is to find the very best master you can, study under him or her, and then do the opposite of everything you learned.

If a painter can manage to capture the moment then he has photography beat.

Rather than trying to paint the right idea, better off just making sure it's not the wrong one. Know what you dont like and secretly be your own worst critic.

Preconception and pretense are the enemy of the artist.

"Many people think that an artist should stick to one certain characteristic style. For myself, an artist with a conscience, breaks in style are of great significance; a continual creative development is far more meaningful in art than the simple repetition of technical possibilities." - Artist Michael Leu

The artist must seek spontaneous impressions of his world and see it with fresh eyes every time.

All art is realism. If you do not agree, then show me something that is not real.

All art is abstract. If you do not agree, then show me something that isnt abstracted.

Art just explores the different aspects of reality we get to experience.

Picasso said that art is a lie that shows us the truth. Perhaps religion is a bit similar.

In the great mansion of art there are few rooms that Picasso has not been to before you.

Everything is full of nonsense anyway so just relax.

Sometimes love is a kind of pain and pain is a kind of love.

Family members give you pain for your own good. It sucks doesnt it?

When you are not inspired, use your lack of inspiration for inspiration.

Throw a little piece of the infinite in every piece.

Your individual spirit is the ultimate currency.

Literally make it or break it.

Matisse knew that painting things was a form of decoding the natural world.

The painter's language is pigment.

Everything is part of a spectrum and should be viewed this way.

Painting is a lot like cell biology in that it is all about differentiation.

Political generaliztions from both sides of the spectrum often have merit.

Look at the great painters and you will be amazed at their subject matter.

Biographical painting is the only kind that matters.

Limitation of subject matter is a weakness when based on pretense for it inhibits thought and exploration.

Be aware of necessary obstacles.

All art is both abstract and realistic a the same time, just to varying degrees.

Everything is an illusion. Isnt that what the buddhists say?

Painting is like magic but only in painting can one learn all the secret tricks and still not know how it happened. That is real magic.

A great painting expresses the truth and hides the lies.

A painter must nevertheless always seek truth.

Honesty is of the utmost importance. Luke said the truth will set you free.

When Eminem sings about "the most honest young artist" that is what he is talking about.

You have to be honest because someone out there will see through you eventually.

Technological innovation is like artistic innovation in that it takes people of imagination and confidence.

Avoid bells and whistles.

Technical skill is just a means to an end.

Light is influenced by the distortion of space/time and somehow that has got to relate to painting.

The artist must be spontaneous and impulsive. He must not prescribe the course of his art. The artist never knows what he wants he just knows what he thinks he wants. In the end the artist gets what he wants but not what he wanted.

Deibenkorn said: "I never get what I want, only what I would have wanted had I thought about it ahead of time".

Picasso had the same idea when he said: "an idea is just a starting point and nothing more, creation is all that matters".

Time is not linear.

Art tells a bigger story than the artist is consciously aware of.

History has many great artists, great musicians, great writers and actors, but can anyone remember any of the critics?

Art is a story over time connected to the unconscious.

The artist does not know the real story in the beginning.

None of us know what we really want. In fact we are often lucky not to get what we want. It makes life more meaningful. Most often what we really want is available but hidden to us. A lot of hard work can reveal it. Only then will we have the real story. That is how it works.

Fear of insignificance is a great motivator.

My greatness is inevitable because the cream of the crop always rises to the top.

The artist must have a giant ego. Show me a great one that didn't.

It helps to have a giant ego in order to transcend it.

Special effects are for the movies, not for painting. They bore me.

That is related to why Vincent said he was not interested in "eye deceiving".

It is expressive quality and character that matters.

"Behold the turtle. He makes progress only when he sticks his neck out."--James B. Conant

The idea of taste is full of problems.

The pendulum of art swings back and forth.

Naivety is good and simplification takes intelligence.

Dont be a blandscape painter.

Art is the recognition of beauty.

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."--F. Scott Fitzgerald

If you cant paint what you want then just keep going until you get something even better.

Art clowns. All artists are a form of clown. I won the class clown award 2 yrs in a row in my Junior High School. As a child, Matisse wanted to be a clown and was later mocked as one. Picasso was obsessed with Harlequins and was famous for clowning around. The clown painting is a famous archetype.

A painting is like a dream where you only remember the important parts. Every detail is not needed and in fact too much leads away from the expressive or metaphorical point.

A great painting is neither over-painted nor under-painted.

You can go nutty trying to know when exactly to stop painting.

Ive always been blessed with a little voice in my head that tells me which color to choose and it is never wrong. It also tells me when to stop painting, but i dont always listen.

The rarest thing in the art world is a good art historian or critic. The only people who know what great art is are the great artists. Asking an art critic about art is like asking a non-surgeon about surgery- it's a waste of time. If critics really knew what great art was then they would be great artists.

In painting there is no difference between knowing and doing. Most people think they know but never do. therefore they dont really know. If they did they would spend more time doing.

Quantifying greatness. Matisse knew that if some artist were to be "as good as Leonardo" then that person could not possible be anything other than Leonardo himself. We are all different and unique.

All great works of art have a leap of faith in them. An "unlikely premise".

You will never see something you are not willing to believe in.

Lots of things we do not understand are more real than we could ever know.

The best way to get someone out of your way is to pass them by.

Science cannot explain the imagination.

I like the process of simplification and deconstruction in painting.

Life is a tightly woven illusion.

Why is there anything as opposed to nothing?

We need evil to see good so there must be a certain good in evil.

Everything ends in paradox. Choose your contradictions wisely.

Dark art is bad when it is made for the sake of being dark and great when it just happens to be dark.

That includes the soul, G-D and unknown beings from other worlds.

Even the most logical man has beliefs that he cannot prove.

I like the argument for design. Things are too perfect to not have been created.

Einstein believed in a creator.

I think UFOs are real because I have seen them a few times. All I know is that they are really weird! I saw 2 that were both the size of large buildings. They were floating in the air and then shazam they vanished. Seemed like they can appear and dissapear and cloak themselves behind clouds. I know it sounds nutty but before you mock me look at all the reputable people over history that report seeing them as well. Officers on the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt reported seeing several in July 1956. Recently a British Airways pilot reported one over a mile long. From the ancient art record to Youtube, the evidence is out there. I'll tell you more about it some other time. It's freaky.

Dont forget that the Bible says that Moses led the Hebrews out of Egypt following a bright light across the desert. I wonder what that bright light was?

I have 2 genius ideas for inventions if anyone wants to sponsor me. I need about 200,000 bucks to get them going.

People's interpretations of reality are generally pretty silly. I am no exception. If we are lucky enough to get good information we usually turn it upside down.

Art should reveal the non-physical reality of the universe.

Deconstruction in the post-modern world can get quite befuddling.

Beware of those that think they know. The only people that know are those that know they dont know.

In a great painting, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

There are 6 senses and art requires the use of as many as possible. At the same time, deprivation of sense can be a good thing, like Goya who couldnt hear but could paint circles around anyone.

I would like to have all of my ceramic sculptures bronzed once I have the money to afford it.

You'd be surprised at how many magicians do not believe in magic.

The best way to lose your friends is to have liberal and conservative ideas.

Perry Farrell is the coolest dude in the world when he says:
"I want to be more like the ocean, no talk - all action!"

Matisse once had a pal named Emmanuel Croize' who said:
"If you are to paint you have to be unable to do anything else"

I've seen many a promising artist founder the moment he or she went and got himself or herself a real job. It truly helps to be penniless and insane.

The painter must PAINT and that is all. Alternative employment for income will inevitably lead to artistic failure.

The idea is what is most important, but let go of it as soon as you must.

New ways of painting come from new ways of thinking and seeing.

Jorgen Hansen reiterates: "Become who you are."

There is no such thing as chance. There is just free will and destiny. Yes it is a paradox.

Desire to achieve success is measured by risk willing to take.

Great intuitive art is nothing more than a form of spirit possession.

Artists are possessed by the art spirit. Read that book by Robert Henri.

Robert Henri also said that no one has ever learned to paint. Known as one of the greatest art teachers of all time, Henri admitted that he could teach his students nothing, only help them teach themselves. This is why most academic art instruction is complete and utter bullshit.

I am not lazy, just impatient for a lack of efficiency and effectiveness. I want to find the fastest way to get from A to B.

Matisse said: "Line and color are not distinct..when color is at its richest, form takes on its fullest expression."

Matisse also talked about how color has an energy that seems to come from witchcraft.

Great artists are like great criminals in that they both share the joy of breaking laws and are good at it.

What good is life without a certain measure of obsession.

Images must be eked out of the imagination the way a sculptor chips away at marble. They are pulled from the subconscious like a fisherman pulls a fish out of the ocean.

The painting already exists somewhere unseen before it is painted.

Aristotle was right. Form follows function. Otherwise there is no way Michelangelo could have sculpted David.

If there ever was a masterpiece that proves divine intervention, David is it.

Art reveals something about ourselves. Seems like an obvious statement.

Reality is distorted, everyone just thinks that they have a "torted" view of the world. Great art reveals the distortions. Picasso said art is a lie that shows us the truth but maybe the opposite is also true.

I sometimes think that the opposite of every truth is also true.

Matisse and Vincent van Gogh both seem to have shown us distortions that were true. Picasso as well. After you see them enough they no longer look distorted. That is why great art is hard to see and ahead of its time.

If no two people see the world the same then no one has the market on how the world "really" looks. Thus critics are fools and all any of us can hope for is a natural drift towards the things that remind us of ourselves.

Where do you draw the line?

Everything is subjective and objective at the same time.

There is only ego, which isnt all that bad and makes life fun.

Dont underestimate the power of soul.

Artificial intelligence will never duplicate human imagination.

Every moment is unique and lasts forever, but at the same time:

(Ecclesiastes 1:9-14 NIV) What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.

The painter balances forces to reveal the inner logic.

Everything ends in paradox. Especially when you study ethical theory.

Things that appear to be fixed change over time. Paintings do this. Like in Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Grey.

Chaos is the rule of the universe. Nothing is totally predictable and you can never keep track of all information.

Life is about making order out of chaos. It is a confusing deal.

If I would have listened to 95% of what my art teachers told me I never would have become who I am today,

Ive had dozens of art teachers and only one of them knew what the hell he was talking about.

Consciousness is the true glue of the universe.

Astrophysicists who think they might actually solve the riddle of the universe are the silliest people around. Im sure it must be fun to be so good at math and be able to think about the cosmos the way that only they can. It is just that most of them do not realize that the answer is the question.

You know what they say about opinions. Please forgive me.

The more I think about this stuff the more I spit out riddles like some Zen Buddhist. I know it is annoying. Im sorry.

Anything is possible on faith. It is really true.

Artists are wise if they acknowledge the infinite power of the creative force of the supreme being and surrender to it without questioning it or themselves

G-D exists!

"Drawing is the root of everything"- Vincent van Gogh

Art is a physical process.

The martial arts are the most physical art form.

Bruce Lee spoke of "the way of no way". He knew his stuff.

Science is only now discovering what ancient yogis have known for millennia.

I want my paintings to be like dreams- where things change constantly and forms are not concrete- they shift with perception.

My paintings sing to me. Each one sings a different song : )

The things that you dont know about yourself are the things that get expressed in a painting. Revealing the unknown can be quite a surprise for everybody.

The more skilled an artist becomes at making detailed work the more reticent he must be to leave it out.

Sometimes it seems like the only thing worse than an undereducated opinion is an overeducated one. At some point you gotta get your head out of the book and get some experience.

It is irrational to expect any government to behave in a manner that is more ethical than the society it is appointed to govern. So relax, it is not a perfect world.

The ends of a spectrum meet eachother. Thus a spectrum is more like the infinity symbol then it is a like a straight line. This explains why magenta is similar to red (and libertarians are like anarchists) even though they are on opposite ends of the spectrum.

It is easier to be a critic than to be a leader.

I draw therefore I am.

Everyone wants to be an artist but few want to take the time to draw.

When I look at the work of the masters I am filled with an inexplicable longing.

I love minimalism and economy of stroke. It is deceptively difficult to achieve. Great artists make it look easy, and people say "i could do that", but the fact is they couldnt, they didnt and they never will. It is like seeing Kelly Slater surf and thinking you could surf the way he does.
Even if you work hard enough to get to that level, you will be different in your own unique way.

Heinrich Heine said "like a great poet, nature knows how to produce the greatest effects with the most limited means." I like that one.

G-D is the greatest artist.

Vincent said he knew of no art greater and more difficult than that of loving other people. I agree.

People get bummed because they do not feel appreciated by others, but think about how g-d feels when so few people appreciate him.

Most people feel more comfortable with the ordinary. Great art is not ordinary. It takes courage to buy a painting that is out of the ordinary.

I like to make slapdash and extemporaneous brushstrokes that capture the moment alla-prima.

In painting it is more important to feel than it is to think.

Thinking is over-rated.

Intuition is under-rated.

"If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much." - Donald Rumsfeld

95% of the criticism of art does nothing more than reveal how little the critic knows about art. People either like something or they dont.

Critics reveal their ignorance constantly.

It is not easy being a good-looking genius but someone has to be me.

Great artists are always a mix of supreme confidence and eternal insecurity. Read what Picasso's girlfriends had to say and you will learn that he was a wreck half the time.

I like to work as quickly as possible. I never wait to work out technical complexities. I look to solve problems instantaneously.

When I first started painting it took me weeks to complete a work but now it only takes hours. The longer it takes for an idea to get across, even if i dont know what it is, the longer it takes to make a painting. Most paintings finish themselves quite quickly and usually faster than I anticipate. The more I paint the quicker I paint and the sooner I finish them.

Matisse said that exactitude is not truth. I think he got that from Cezanne.

If people do not think then they must feel.

I am either a genius or one of the great failed painters of history!

Why is there anything as opposed to nothing? Because life is ironic.

"If a problem has no solution, it may not be a problem, but a fact, not to be solved, but to be coped with over time."--Shimon Peres

The pen is mightier than the sword unless you have a pen and the other guy has a sword.

Picasso quotes are pure genius.

Problems are solved by individuals not by ideology.

Painting is a language that conforms to rules and laws that become more complex as it evolves. The paradox is that the more it evolves the more simple it gets on a larger level. Not to mention every rule eventually gets broken. I dont know. It is really crazy. Just picture a pyramid with an arrow in it pointing up.

Art is a kind of clarity that explains the human experience.

The creative spirit is a bursting rhythm.

Just a fraction of the great spirit.

The only kind of painting that can be taught is formula painting and that is not really painting at all.

Put all written complaints in Haiku form.

David Brower says never take yourself too seriously.

Charles de Gaulle said," the cemeteries of the world are full of indispensable men." Clever quote at best.

People tell me that art is not personal so dont take it personally but when they say that I think screw that it is all personal.

A biographical painter paints himself no matter what the subject. It is an intrinsic and unavoidable aspect of being an honest artist.

There is no such thing as a mistake.

Painters must adopt a holistic view of painting and not get caught up in particulars.

Painting, like so many things, operates by theory. It is important to collect all the little facts but more important to integrate them into one whole. The macrocosm is what matters.

A gimmick is the weakest but most popular theory in modern art.

Real art is profound even when ridiculous.

The less someone understands your art the more you should charge them to buy it.

Life is a painting that has already been painted and I am but a dribble of oil waiting to dry.

Beware of people that use "art" to rationalize their bad behavior.

I want to write a spoof on The Artist's Way that has goofy exercises involving cliche' "artist" behavior like drug use and the bohemian lifestyle.

Picasso said that "painting is stronger than me and makes me do its bidding". If you feel that way then you are a painter.

It takes soul to recognize soul.

Paintings, dreams, songs and stories are all the same in many ways.

I dont mind being humbled I just cant stand other people that take it upon themselves to try and humble me.

If not me who? If not now, when? -Ancient hebrew adage that my dad taught me.

Great ideas are like great waves. You just have to get to the right place at the right time with the right equipment and your g-d given talent will allow you success.

The analogies between surfing and painting are endless. Waves are one of the greatest metaphors.

The most difficult and important thing is being free.

I gotta do what I gotta do so that means I have to be the way I am and it is all whether you like it or not.

I've done my greatest work when I wasnt even trying.

Degas said: "the artist is only capable of great things when he doesnt know what he is doing:.

Painting is a mystical act. It is a quick rhythmic experience.

A painting is complete when the voice in your head telling you to paint is quieter than the voice telling you to stop.

However, like de Kooning said, no painting is ever finished it is just abandoned at some point.

Picasso talked about how no painting is ever finished- unless it is destroyed.

"The world is full of third-raters and mediocrity". Quote from an old mentor.

What's the deal with the Decider? Click here to find out!

What's the deal with Obama? Click here to find out!

Picasso said that painting is a form of exorcism.

Painting is also a lot like having sex. I'll leave that one up to you to figure out.

Rick Stich once recounted these old adages to me:
"Every dog has his day" and "The lord hates a coward!"
Those are good ones for artists to remember.

Know the difference between compassion and weakness.

Knowing who you are is detaching from people that diminish you or bring you down. Especially your loved ones. It is vital to know when not to care what anyone thinks. Not to say there isnt a time for that though.

Jorgen Hansen says: "Let your soul out!" He got that from some famous actress I forgot her name.

Hansen also says that" art is the materialization of the spirit".

Im like a porcupine, If you dont want to get pricked then back off.
(though i do have a soft and furry underbelly)

Teddy Roosevelt said: "Walk softly and carry a big stick".

The mark of a man is not in how many meetings he has in the business day but how many meetings he doesnt have to go to.

Art asks questions, it doesnt answer them.

Have confidence in you unique imperfection.

Your nonsense makes more sense than you think.

If you can find it, check out this crazy article by Antonin Artaud: "Van Gogh, the Man Suicided by Society"- Paris 1947

History is a cycle between chaos and novelty. Terence McKenna said that. He is one trippy dude.

It took me years to understand cubism and when i did it blew my mind.

Trust in your self. Dont follow others.

The artist's own unique nature is the very thing that attracts others to his art. If he cant see his own unique nature then it will be difficult to understand why others are attracted to his art. Too much humility is just as deadly as too little. That is why ego in itself is not a bad thing.

Nobody knows what anything looks like.

The only reason why anything exists is because some force thought about it first.

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MORE QUOTES:

# "A beautiful thing never gives so much pain as does failing to hear and see it." Michelangelo # "A great sculpture can roll down a hill without breaking" Michelangelo # "A line is a dot that went for a walk." Paul Klee. # " Michelangelo" A man paints with his brains and not with his hands. # "A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be." Abraham Maslo # "A painting is never finished - it simply stops in interesting places." Paul Gardner # "A room hung with pictures is a room hung with thoughts." Sir Joshua Reynolds # "A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art." Paul Cëzanne # "Abstract paintings must be as real as those created by the 16th century Italians." Frank Stella # "All art is an individual's expression of a culture. Cultures differ, so art looks different." Henry Glassie # "All art is but imitation of nature." Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 B.C. - 65 A.D.) # "All art is but imitation of nature." Seneca # "Always design a thing by considering its next larger context- a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan." Eero Saarinen # "An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision." James McNeill Whistler # "Architecture . . . is for the young. If our teenagers don't get architecture -- if they are not inspired -- we won't have the architecture. . . that we must have if this country is going to be beautiful." Frank Lloyd Wright # "Architecture is inhabited sculpture." Constantin Brancusi # "Architecture is the triumph of Human Imagination over materials, methods, and men, to put man into possession of his own Earth. It is at least the geometric pattern of things, of life, of the human and social world. It is at best that magic framework of reality that we sometimes touch upon when we use the word order." Frank Lloyd Wright # "Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible." Paul Klee # "Art doesn't transform. It just plain forms." Roy Lichtenstein # "Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time." Thomas Merton, 'No Man Is an Island' # "Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist." Rene Magritte # "Art flourishes where there is a sense of adventure." Alfred North Whitehead # "Art is a lie that helps us to realize the truth." Pablo Picasso # "Art is a passion or it is nothing." Robert Fry (Vision and Design) # "Art is a way of expression that has to be understood by everyone, everywhere." Rufino Tamayo, artist # "Art is contemplation. It is the pleasure of the mind which searches into nature and which there divines the spirit of which Nature herself is animated." Auguste Rodin # "Art is either plagiarism or revolution." Paul Gaugin # "Art is everywhere, except it has to pass through a creative mind." Louise Nevelson # "Art is idea. It is not enough to draw, paint, and sculpt. An artist should be able to think." Gordon Woods # "Art is like a border of flowers along the course of civilization." Lincoln Steffens # "Art is made to disturb. Science reassures. There is only one valuable thing in art: the thing you cannot explain." Georges Braque # "Art is not the bread, but the wine of life." John Paul Richter # "Art is not what you see, but what you make others see." Edgar Degas # "Art is skill, that is the first meaning of the word." Eric Gill # "Art is the signature of civilizations." Beverly Sills # "Art must be an expression of love or it is nothing." Marc Chagall # "Art takes nature as its model." Aristotle # "Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life." Henry Miller # "Art washes from the soul the dust of everyday life." Pablo Picasso # "Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything." Eugene Delacroix # "As a suffering creature, I cannot do without something greater than I -- something that is my life -- the power to create." Vincent Van Gogh # "As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death." Leonardo da Vinci # "As music is the poetry of sound, so is painting the poetry of sight and the subject-matter has nothing to do with harmony of sound or of color." James McNeil Whistler # "Beauty is the purgation of superfluities." Michelangelo # "Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing." Camille Pissarro # "Color in a picture is like enthusiasm in life." Vincent Van Gogh # "Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul. " Wassily Kandinsky # "Colour is my day- long obsession, joy and torment." Claude Monet # "Conception, my boy, fundamental brain work, is what makes all the difference in art." Dante Gabriel Rosetti # "Conversation in real life is full of half-finished sentences and overlapping talk. Why shouldn't painting be too?" Edgar Degas # "Culture is something that evolves out of the simple, enduring elements of everyday life; elements most truthfully expressed in the folk arts and crafts of a nation." Thor Hansen # "Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up." Pablo Picasso # "Every good painter paints what he is." Jackson Pollock # "Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters; united with it, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of marvels." Francisco Goya (1746-1828) - Spanish artist # "Fill a space in a beautiful way" Georgia O'Keeffe # "Form ever follows function." Louis H. Sullivan # "Good art is not what it looks like, but what it does to us. " Roy Adzak # "Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful." William Morris # "Have you seen that portrait Gaugin did of me painting sunflowers? it was really I, but it's I gone mad." Vincent Van Gogh # "He who works with his hands is a laborer. He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman. He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist." St Fancis of Assisi # "How important are the visual arts in our society? I feel strongly that the visual arts are of vast and incalculable importance. Of course I could be prejudiced. I am a visual art." Kermit the Frog, muppet # "How wonderful yellow is. It stands for the sun." Vincent Van Gogh # "I am an artist- I am here to live out loud." Emile Zola # "I am interested in ideas, not merely in visual products." Marcel Duchamp # "I applied streaks and blobs of colours onto the canvas with a palette knife and I made them sing with all the intensity I could..." Wassily Kandinsky # "I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else." Pablo Picasso # "I believe it is impossible to make sense of life in this world except through art." Daniel Pinkwater # "I build a painting by putting little marks together some look like hot dogs, some like doughnuts." Chuck Close # "I do not literally paint that table, but the emotion it produces upon me." Henri Matisse # "I do not want ART for a few any more than education for a few, or freedom for a few." William Morris # "I feel as though I haven't seem an object until I actually start painting it." Janet Fish # "I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way- things I had no words for." Georgia O'Keeffe # "I hope with all my heart that there will be painting in heaven." Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot # "I just feel that I'm in tune with the right vibrations in the universe when I'm in the process of working." Louise Nevelson # "I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain." John Adams, 2nd U.S. President 1735-1826 # "I never intended to make art." Walt Disney, when his work was displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art # "I never paint dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality." Frida Kahlo # "I often think the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day. " Vincent Van Gogh # "I paint in order not to cry." Paul Klee # "I shut my eyes in order to see. or I close my eyes in order to see" Paul Gaugin # "I try to apply colors like words that shape poems, like notes that shape music." Joan Miro # "I want to make high art that is funny, outrageous and also reveals the human condition, which is not always high." Robert Arneson # "I want to thank anyone who spends part of their day creating, I don't care if it's a book, a film, a painting, a dance, a piece of theater, a piece of music--anybody who spends part of their day sharing their experience with us--I think this world would be unlivable without art and I thank you." Steve Soderbergh # "I want to touch people with my art. I want them to say 'he feels deeply, he feels tenderly.'" Vincent Van Gogh # "I would like to recapture that freshness of vision which is characteristic of extreme youth when all the world is new to it." Henri Matisse # "I'll make them big like huge buildings going up. People will be startled; they will have to look at them." Georgia O'Keeffe flower series # "If I didn't start painting, I would have raised chickens." Grandma Moses # "If I didn't think what I was doing had something to do with enlarging the boundaries of art, I wouldn't go on doing it." Claes Oldenburg # "If painting weren't so difficult, it wouldn't be fun." Edgar Degas # "If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful at all." Michelangelo # "If the artist sees nothing within him, then he should also refrain from painting what he sees before him." Caspar David Friedrich # "Imagination is the true magic carpet." Norman Vincent Peale # "Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it, we go nowhere." Carl Sagan, Cosmos # "In an artist's life, death is perhaps not the most difficult thing." Vincent Van Gogh # "It has bothered me all my life that I do not paint like everybody else." Henri Matisse # "It is important to express oneself...provided the feelings are real and are taken from you own experience." Berthe Morisot # "It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to, the feeling for the things themselves, for reality, is more important than the feeling for pictures." Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) - Dutch artist # "It takes a very long time to become young." Pablo Picasso # "It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child." Pablo Picasso # "Just as our eyes need light in order to see, our minds need ideas in order to create." Nicole Malebranche # "Life obliges me to do something, so I paint." Rene Magritte # "Life without industry is guilt, and industry without art is brutality." John Ruskin # "Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I can accomplish." Michelangelo # "My contribution to the world is my ability to draw. I will draw as much as I can for as many people as I can for as long as I can. Drawing is still basically the same as it has been since prehistoric times. It brings together man and the world. It lives through magic." Keith Haring # "Nature is not only all that is visible to the eye it also includes the inner pictures of the soul." Edvard Munch # "No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination." Edward Hopper # "No longer shall I paint interiors with men reading and women knitting. I will paint living people who breather and feel and suffer and love." Edvard Munch # "Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely." Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) - French artist # "One must from time to time attempt things that are beyond one's capacity." Auguste Renoir # "Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things." Edgar Degas # "Painting from nature is not copying the object; it is realizing one's sensations." Paul CŽzanne # "Painting is easy for those that do not know how, but very difficult for those that do!" Edgar Degas # "Painting is just another way of keeping a diary." Pablo Picasso # "Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks." Simonides (500 B. C.) # "People call me the painter of dancers, but I really wish to capture movement itself." Edgar Degas # "Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master." Leonardo da Vinci # "So I said to myself- I'll paint what I see- what the flower is to me but I'll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking the time to look at it- I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers." Georgia O'Keeffe 1887-1986 # "Talent! What they call talent is nothing but the capacity for doing continuous work in the right way." Winslow Homer # "The aim off art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance." Aristotle # "The artist is the antenna of the race." Ezra Pound (from the book, Art & Physics by Leonard Schlain) # "The artist need not know very much; best of all let him work instinctively and paint as naturally as he breathes or walks." Emil Nolde # "The beautiful is in nature, and it is encountered under the most diverse forms of reality. Once it is found it belongs to art, or rather to the artist who discovers it." Gustave Courbet # "The best reason to paint is that there is no reason to paint....I'd like to pretend that I've never seen anything, never read anything, never heard anything...and then make something....Every time I make something I think about the people who are going to see it and every time I see something, I think about the person who made it....Nothing is important...so everything is important." Keith Haring # "The big artist... keeps an eye on nature and steals her tools." Thomas Eakins # "The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution." Paul Cezanne # "The emotions are sometimes so strong that I work without knowing it. The strokes come like speech." Vincent Van Gogh # "The essence of drawing is the line exploring space." Andy Goldsworthy # "The function of Art is to disturb. Science reassures." George Braque # "The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery." Francis Bacon # "The more horrifying this world becomes, the more art becomes abstract." Paul Klee # "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. Albert Einstein " # "The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity." Alberto Giacometti # "The only time I feel alive is when I'm painting." Vincent Van Gogh # "The painting has a life of its own." Jackson Pollock # "The position of the artist is humble. He is essentially a channel." Piet Mondrian # "The sculptor, and the painter also, should be trained in these liberal arts: grammar, geometry, philosophy, medicine, astronomy, perspective, history, anatomy, theory of design, arithmetic." Lorenzo Ghiberti # "The source of genius is imagination alone, the refinement of the senses that sees what others do not see, or sees them differently." Eug�ne Delacroix # "The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection. " Michelangelo (1475-1564) - Italian artist # "There are more valid facts and details in works of art than there are in history books." Charlie Chaplin # "There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot, but there are others who, thanks to their art and intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun." Pablo Picasso # "There are three forms of visual art: Painting is art to look at, sculpture is art you can walk around, and architecture is art you can walk through." Dan Rice # "There is a battle that goes on between men and women. Many people call it love." Edvard Munch # "There is no must in art because art is free." Wassily Kandinsky # "There is one thing one has to have: either a soul that is cheerful by nature, or a soul made cheerful by work, love, art, and knowledge." Friedrich Nietzsche # "They see poetry in what I have done. No. I apply my methods, and that is all there is to it." Georges Seurat # "This woman's work is exceptional. Too bad she's not a man." Edouard Manet, commenting on the work of Berthe Morisot # "Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing." Salvador Dali # "To become truly immortal, a work of art must escape all human limits: logic and commonsense will only interfere. But once these barriers are broken, it will enter the realms of childhood visions and dreams." Giorgio DeChirico # "To create one's own world in any of the arts takes courage." Georgia O'Keeffe # "To draw, you must close your eyes and sing." Pablo Ruiz y Picasso # "We live in a beautiful and orderly world, not in a chaos without norms, even though this is how it sometimes appears." M. C. Escher (Dutch) # "We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us." Sir Winston Churchill # "We should comport ourselves with the masterpieces of art as with exalted personages- stand quietly before them and wait until they speak to us." Arthur Schopenhauer # "We work not only to produce but to give value to time." Eugene Delacroix # "What good are computers? They can only give you answers." Pablo Picasso # "What I dream of is an art of equilibrium, purity and tranquility, devoid of upsetting or troubling subject matter ..." Henri Matisse # "What is one to think of those fools who tell one that the artist is always subordinate to nature? Art is a harmony parallel with nature." Paul CŽzanne # "What is real is not the external form, but the essence of things . . . it is impossible for anyone to express anything essentially real by imitating its exterior surface." Brancusi # "What moves men of genius, or rather what inspires their work, is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is still not enough." Eugene Delacroix # "When I feel a little confused the only thing to do is to turn back to the study of nature before launching once again into the subjects closest to heart." Raoul Dufy # "When I was a kid, a book I read advised young artist to be themselves. That decided it for me. I was a corny kind of guy, so I went in for corn." Walt Disney # "When my daughter was about seven years old, she asked me one day what I did at work. I told her I worked at the college- that my job was to teach people how to draw. She stared back at me, incredulous, and said, You mean they forget?" Howard Ikemoto # "When the subject is strong, simplicity is the only way to treat it." Jacob Lawrence # "Without fear and illness, I could never have accomplished all I have." Edvard Munch # "Women at that time were supposed to look pretty and throw little handkerchiefs around...well, I couldn't play that role." Louise Nevelson # "Work cures everything." Matisse. # "You can't make an architect. But you can . . . open the doors and windows toward the light as you see it." Frank Lloyd Wright # "Every good painter paints what he is." Jackson Pollack # "It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance." Henry James # "If you are looking for something to be brave about consider fine arts." Robert Frost # "The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things but their inward significance." Aristotle # "The most beautiful thing we cna experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science." Albert Einstein # "Art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic." Oscar Wilde # "Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one." Stella Adler # "Art is either plagiarism or revolution." Paul Gaugin # "Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures." Henry Ward Beecher # "I passionately hate the idea of being with it; I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time." Orson Wells # "Art flourishes where there is a sense of adventure." Alfred North Whitehead # "Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up." Pablo Picasso # "Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old." Franz Kafka # "Art is a higher type of knowledge than experience." Aristotle # "Great artists are people who find the way to be themselves in their art." Margot Fonteyn # "If the meaning is there, don't seek for outward likeness." Chen Yuyi # "There is no must in art because art is free." Vasily Kandinsky # "Art is the only way to run away without leaving home." Twyla Tharp # "Any museum can invite you to look. A great one changes the way you see." Anonymous # "In the end, art outlives politics." Anonymous # "If w work of art or a new style disturbs you, then it is probably good work. If you hate it, it is probably great." Leo Steinberg # "The secret of life is in art." Anonymous # "In art, truth that is boring is not true." Isaac Bashevis Singer # "Art is the elimination of the superfluous." Michelangelo # "There is no prejudice that the work of art does not eventually overcome." Andre Gide # "Life is short, art is long..." Hippocrates # "Only through art can we get outside of ourselves and know another;s view of the universe which is not the same as ours and see landscapes which would otherwise have remained unkwown to us like the landscapes of the moon." Marcel Proust # "We can't begin to live a more artful life, which is the avenue to the soul, if in the public life around us, and everything we see and inhabit, art is invisible." Thomas Moore # "Art does work - it is just self employed." Brian JosŽ # "Art washes from the soul the dust of everyday life." Pablo Picasso # "Art disease is caused by the hardening of the categories." Adina Reinhardt

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