Many of these quotations, especially the longer ones, are from books I have in my home library. Many others are from articles, essays, and books I've read since I began these pages. Some of the quotations (and some of the articles, and even books!) have been sent to me by friends.

I continue to add quotations as I read more and save things that seem to me like something I could read again and again and still gain something from them.

There is a great variety of quotations for artists here, some inspiring one to work harder, some offering theories of art, some exploring the origins of the impulse to create art, some explaining a point of view, and many others offering a variety of stimulation, insight, and even a bit of 'instruction' (to be considered if one agrees with the artist's ideas about what is useful).

If you find that the first several quotations aren't the kind of quotations you're looking for, please note that they aren't in any kind of order other than "those I came across first...to the latest," and so I suggest you skim through all the pages (there are always more quotations being added - so come back, if you'd like to see more). .The general character of the quotations changes as I leave behind those that were easiest to come across (and often not in any context), and progressing to those that I have found in my more recent reading - I try to give the context where I have it and I think it enhances understanding.

"Art does not reproduce what we see. .It makes us see." - Paul Klee

"Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable." -- George Bernard Shaw

"Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life." - Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)

"You must always work not just within but below your means. . If you can handle three elements, handle only two. .If you can handle ten, then handle only five. In that way the ones you do handle, you handle with more ease, more mastery, and you create a feeling of strength in reserve." - Pablo Picasso (recalled by Francoise Gilot in book: Life With Picasso by Francoise Gilot and Carlton Lake, New York, McGraw-Hill, 1964)

"To be understood a writer has to explain almost everything. .In a painting, a mysterious bridge seems to exist between its painted subjects and the spectator's spirit." - Eugene Delacroix (French painter: 1798-1863) in his Journal

"Fine works of art never age, because they are marked by genuine feeling. The language of the passions, the impulses of the heart, are always the same; what inevitably gives the stamp of age, and sometimes mars the greatest beauty, are the formulae which were fashionable at the time of creation." - Eugene Delacroix in his Journal

"Feeling must not be expressed to the point of nausea." - Eugene Delacroix in his Journal

"Contrary to common opinion, I would say that color has a more mysterious and perhaps more powerful influence: it acts, as one might say, without our knowledge." - Eugene Delacroix in his Journal

"Color is nothing if it is not suitable to the subject, and if, in imagination, it does not add to the effect of the painting." - Eugene Delacroix in his Journal

"The more literal the imitation, the flatter it is, and the more it shows how impossible it is to rival the original. One can only hope to arrive at some approximate equivalent. It is not the thing itself which must be done, but only its semblance: and here again the effect must be for the soul and not the eye." - Eugene Delacroix in his Journal

"One of the great satisfactions Delacroix derived from art was its ability to capture the transient, to preserve a sense of immediacy. Comparing painting with the other arts, he noted that while music and literature are obliged to unroll note by note and word by word, and require one's attention over a span of many minutes or even hours, painting could deliver its message instantaneously, like the view seen outside a door suddenly flung open. The highest compliment people could pay Delacroix was to tell him that they saw his works 'all at once.' To him it meant not only that he had created a unified total effect, with no single detail obtruding, but that he had successfully flouted time." - Tom Prideaux, in book: The World of Delacroix 1798 - 1863, Time-Life Library of Art

"Delacroix's importance...lies less in his art -- marvelous though much of it is -- than in his view of what art should do to the beholder. It was his belief that painting's function was to communicate directly to the soul. Nowadays, it seems, souls have gone out of style in favor of egos. But what Delacroix was saying, in effect, was that a picture must do more than present a literal image; it must stir us deeply, it must appeal to our senses, it must reach us in every possible way." - Tom Prideaux, in The World of Delacroix

"Tell Serret that I should be desperate if my figures were academically correct; that if one photographed a digger he certainly would not appear to be digging. Tell him that I adore the figures of Michelangelo, though the legs are undoubtedly too long, the hips and the backsides too large. Tell him that for me Millet and Lhermitte are the real artists, for the very reason that they do not paint things as they are, traced in a dry analytical way, but as they -- Millet, Lhermitte, Michelangelo -- feel them. Tell him that my great longing is to learn to make those very incorrectnesses, those deviations, remodelings, changes of reality, that they may become -- yes, untruth if you like -- but more true than the literal truth." - Vincent Van Gogh

"I myself have never known a painter or known of a painter whose career was not distinguished by prodigious labor, by the sacrifice of all advantages and personal welfare to the accomplishing of the work which he had in mind. But the lot of the artist is supposed to be a jolly one; the art schools are inclined toward advising the young person just to 'let the art happen.' And biographers are prone to dwell upon the remarkable operation of genius and inspiration, rather than to attribute to their artist-subjects any such lowly procedure as that of work. Writers upon art are permitted to indulge themselves in a romanticism and, sometimes, a want of hard discipline that would spell death to art itself." - Ben Shahn in his book: The Shape of Content, Harvard University Press, 1957

"The eye at birth cannot perceive at all, and it is only through training that it learns to recognize what it sees. The popular eye is not untrained; it is only wrongly trained - trained by inferior and insincere visual representations." - Ben Shahn, in The Shape of Content

"'What shall I paint?' - the answer is a pretty obvious one, 'Paint what you are, paint what you believe, paint what you feel.' But to go a little deeper, such a question seems to indicate an absence of opinion, or perhaps it indicates a belief, not an uncommon one, that painting ought to be this or ought to be that, that there is some preferred list of appropriate subjects. Again I think that many young people if they were asked 'What do you believe, or hold most dear?' would reply honestly, 'I do not know.' And so we again go back to our first outline for an education: 'In college or out of college, read, and form opinions.'" - Ben Shahn, in The Shape of Content

"The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new 'landscapes' - but in having new eyes." - Marcel Proust

"Movement expressed through a sweeping blur of energies, by freezing action in a crisp relief, or through geometry of composition, all conspire to move the eye into the picture, to feel around and exit with a sense of participation." - Jeff Berner in his book: The Photographic Experience, Anchor Books, 1979

A quote from John Berger, from his book: About Looking, is rather long, so is not on this page. .It refers to three photographs by photographer Paul Strand, which are quite wonderful; Berger explains what makes them so special. Please click here if you would like to read this quote.

"One cannot create an art that speaks to men when one has nothing to say." - Andre Malraux (1901 - 1966) French novelist, art historian, and statesman

"That is what the title of artist means: one who perceives more than his fellows, and who records more than he has seen." - Edward Gordon Craig (1872 - 1966) - Actor, theatre director, designer, wood engraver, critic, publisher and artist

"We judge a drawing good or bad in the light of our prejudices, which are the result of education and artistic sensibility. . However, there are drawings, made by savages or children, by the sophisticated or the naive, by the trained and the untrained, which have a timeless and universal quality that transcends individual judgment." - from The Watson Drawing Book, by Ernest W. Watson and Aldren A. Watson, Van Nostrand Reinhold, NY, 1962

A quote describing Cezanne's painting technique is also rather long, so is on another page. .If you would like to read it, please click here.