Being an Artist Quotes
The concept of ‘Aesthetics,’ first framed by the philosopher Alexander Baumgarten in 1735, proposed art as a realm distinct from morality, politics, and religion. Yet, this philosophical view often contrasts sharply with the actual conditions artists face in the art world—a realm where ideals meet the harsh realities of market dynamics and societal expectations. This collection of sayings and quotes aims to provide a raw and inspirational look into the artistic experience. Engage with these reflections to better understand what it means to live and work as an artist today.
Quotes about Being an Artist
More than an artist
“I always get tongue-tied when people ask me what I do.
I feel I can’t just say artist, plus I like the idea or being MORE”
✒ Alli-K
Seeking mentors
“Make sure you seek out and nurture mentors. Successful artists work closely with other artists and have not one but often numerous mentors to guide them through their careers.”
✒ Angie Wojak
Artist common sense
“Our society is so lost. While I’m here painting and being inspired by how beautiful our planet is, it’s all just burning down. Yesterday I spent the day hiding feeling incapable of understanding:
- why are corporate agendas more important than the lung of our world,
- why do we protect profit instead of natural resources,
- why we see ourselves as individuals separate from other living organisms in our shared home when actually we are all of them.
In order to look for what is more convenient for ourselves we have to think of what is more convenient for all of us, and that is work under ethical and sustainable manners that don’t harm others, it’s just common sense.”
✒ Caro Arévalo
Making the same painting
“In a way, I’ve been making the same painting ever since I was fourteen”
✒ David Salle
Artists referred to as pretentious
“If it’s artists being referred to as pretentious, then Yeah, artists do regularly attempt to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, and culture that is actually possessed.”
✒ Sarah Urist Green
The artist mindset
“That’s part of the artist mindset, that you’re always looking for things that don’t exist. It’s maddening. But when you get to a place you didn’t even expect to exist, it’s the most satisfying, fulfilling feeling that I’ve had next to having a child.”
✒ Elise R Peterson – The Creative Independent
Entrepreneurial artist
“The entrepreneurial artist does not fit into a system of legitimation already established. He seeks to create his own promotion matrix. In another term, it’s a hacker artist”
✒ Frederic Clad
The pretension of being an artist
“I’m the closest thing you’ll get to Picasso in this life”
✒ Julian Schnabel
-Article The Guardian, Photo: Nathaniel Welch/Corbis Outline
Artists on social media
“Being an artist on Social Media is just constantly trying to find new ways to say ‘thank you’”
✒ RJ Palmer concept artist
Being a bad artist
“I’m a bad artist. I’m lazy and I’m untalented and bad. That’s not really true, but it’s how I feel a lot of the time. And when I’m looking back at my favorite projects over the last decade, I’ve noticed how often they were preceded or motivated by really negative emotions like this. I get something similar to creative block, but I would just call it paralysis. I’m just afraid to make anything at all. I’m afraid it will be shitty. And when other people ask me for advice on making stuff, I say stuff like…”
Just keep making things. Don’t worry about it. Just make it and think about it later.
Make stuff
“And that’s easier said than done because you want the stuff you make to be so good and better than all the stuff you’ve made before, and good enough to live up to your crazy expectations of what makes a thing good.”
Feel like shit process
“I’m an idiot. I’m an idiot because it’s an ongoing cycle. And I’m not saying this to complain. I just think a lot of people have this problem, and part of the solution for me is letting myself feel like shit. That’s part of my process. Most of my art projects are either inspired by anxiety and negative emotions, or they’re like a release valve from anxiety.”
✒ Lisa Hanawalt, BoJack Horseman – XOXO Festival (2015)
Success versus experience
“Maybe I could have been more successful earlier on if I’d focused on one medium, but I wouldn’t trade it for the myriad of experiences I’ve had along the way. I like to do it all, but it doesn’t come without sacrifice.”
✒ Malia James
-Interview by Armine Iknadossian (2013)
What it takes to be a good artist
“I think people don’t quite realize how much work it takes to be a good artist—the drive and determination and self-criticism. You have to be harder on your work than anybody. But you’re always going to find people like that in every generation.”
-Roberta Smith Co-Chief Art Critic New York Times
✒ “Roberta Smith with Jarrett Earnest” Brooklyn Rail
Artist financial cushion
“Getting started as an artist is wildly unsustainable unless you already have a financial cushion, which might come from a trust fund or sex work or a rich spouse.”
✒ Molly Crabapple (artnews)
Being an artist becomes the craft
“I was really interested in artists’ belief in themselves. I think that when Duchamp gave artists the godlike right to designate something as art, he puts artists in a very difficult position. How do you command that authority? To do that is really a real shift and I don’t think it’s any accident that Duchamp started experimenting with his persona. He started crafting identities at the same time as crafting ideas.”
(…)
“Ironically, with conceptual art, being an artist becomes the craft.”
✒ Sarah Thornton “33 Artists in 3 Acts” Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago 2014
Artist assistants
“When I post images on Instagram showing staff members other than myself painting of assisting with the installations, from some corner of the world inevitably arrives the criticism.”
✒ Takashi Murakami
Art selling directly to consumer
“The Kaplan Twins are two really sexy girls that I found online I got this space and asked them if they wanted to move in, they said yes. This is effectively an art incubator. Almost immediately we started to think of ideas of how we can monetize their brands in the environment which is direct-to-consumer part sales on Instagram. They made this interesting observation which was that they got a lot more likes on photos of themselves than they did on their artwork. So we got to think about how we can integrate an art object into their lives and tell the stories of their involvement with the art object. Then sell it directly to consumers.”
✒ Matty Mo ( aka The Most Famous Artist ) about The Kaplan Twins
Dating an artist
“Anyone who dares to date an artist or a writer shouldn’t be surprised if they end up in their art in some form.”
✒ Angela Olsen
An artist mantra
“Henry James, he was on his deathbed, he is at the peak of his career, he has never made a misstep, everything he has done is perfectly… he begs, he begs for one more chance to do something good. And he has this wonderful… it’s my mantra:
“We work in the dark,
We do what we can,
Our doubt is our passion,
and our passion is our task.”
And it’s like this military march that I march to. I think of it all the time.”
✒ Sally Mann
Lifetime and art time
“I was an illegal immigrant in the States for fourteen years, and most of my One Year Performances were done during this time. We could use the Panama Canal as an example: when a ship comes from a lower to a higher water level or the other way around, the ship can pass through only when the two different water levels meet. The water level of my art and life need to be the same, so I can sail into art from life, and transfer lifetime to art time.”
✒ Tehching Hsieh
Artists Egocentrism
“For two egocentric driving artists, it is not easy to join forces. To create one and the same work together and authorize the work as one. And that was the difficulty actually”
✒ Ulay (Frank Uwe Laysiepen)
30 November 1943 – 2 March 2020
“Ulay Interview: Under My Skin” Louisiana Channel
Artists heritage and difference
“(…) this is what I’m trying to do with my painting: work within the tradition I inherited, but make moves that signal my difference from it.”
-Njideka Akunyili Crosby
✒ Interview by Erica Ando on Bomb magazine Sep 15, 2016
Inspirational Quotes About Being Artistic
Poetic definition of Art
“Art is the loudest silence. Scream quietly”
Aya
Artists without art background
“What I’m trying to do is kind of combining classical performance art, like from the ’60s or ’70s, with kind of viral videos of today. So I’m really into the performance art aspect of it. People that know performance art notice that kind of straightaway, they don’t have a problem with it. But people that do not have an art background have a lot of problems with me calling it art. But I mean, I really don’t care.”
✒ Interview on Mashable April 16, 2029
Worthwhile
“Before I started posting my videos on Instagram my audience was quite small to put it mildly, putting up art shows seen by less than a hundred people wasn’t unusual. Now my videos have been seen by millions. It’s quite bizarre. If anything, it has strengthened my belief that what I’m doing is worthwhile.”
-Jan Hakon Erichsen
Visual artist and balloon destroyer
✒ Interview The Yale Politic
Art is What we stay alive for
“And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love: these are what we stay alive for.”
✒ Tom Schulman, “Dead Poets Society”
Art is priceless
“Art is so important for humanity as it is both useless, worthless and priceless!”
Joseph Kaliher
Artist is the medium
“Art is thought made manifest. It is the transition of ideas into matter, conjuring a rabbit out of a top hat’s silky ether. An artist is an agent of concepts, both shamanic and constructive. Paint or clay may be the media. An artist is the medium. Art is magic”
✒ Matt Smart
Showing artworks at home
“It was about the work and the whole concept of the show was home and family. But to me, home is somewhere that I feel comfortable, to just kick back, relax and read and I don’t feel rushed. I feel like a lot of time in galleries when I go there I feel like I go in, I see the work, and I come out. And I don’t relate to this space or I don’t relate to anything within the space.”
✒ Ronan McKenzie Project “I’m Home” (2018)
Tribal artists
“Amazing art styles can be found in every corner of the earth but unfortunately, the earth is round. This is especially true for tribal artists where the art patterns are not even recognized as art as they could be as simple as lines or dots. It’s about time tribal art is given the same value or status as much as other art forms”
✒ Sangma Hanny
The possibility it doesn’t work out
“The scariest thing is to know that you finally have gotten to this level, that I’ve always strived to attain since I was fourteen years old… Um… and there’s a possibility that you know, it doesn’t all work out. You know, that it isn’t all perfect once you get to this… the most… the uppermost echelon. And this one took four months. And I worked on it… I didn’t take a break. I worked on it straight through for four months. Every day, seven days a week.”
An artist is married to his work
I’m not an easy person to live with. Because, you know, I’m married to my work, in a way. But your partner, your wife or spouse, is completely understanding that you need to do that or to be the person you want to be. And that’s an incredible gift.”
✒ William Fisk
Quality of the work
“When you really care about what you are doing and it really matters on a personal level, it comes through the quality of the work. I think that’s what viewers respond to most.”
✒ Zaria Forman
Knowing yourself
“Abstraction is one of the most sophisticated ways of coming to feeling, like a piece of music: You have tone, color, rhythm, so many things that touch you right inside,”
(…)
“I really want to get to the core of what I don’t know. And what I don’t know fascinates me more than what I know, even about myself.”
-Shirazeh Houshiary
✒ “As Tensions Rise With Iran, So Does Interest in Art It Inspired”
NY Times March 8, 2020
By Farah Nayeri
Find your art niche
“It was a bittersweet but critical realization that I wasn’t an artist that would be embraced by the art world as it existed at the time. I would have to find a niche.”
✒ Christian van Minnen – Artwork “Harder Darker Freer Lover” (detail)
Artists need to do the dirty work
“When I decided to though, I approached the internet (mainly Instagram) as a vessel of self-monitoring and progression, also to find a community of like-minded creatives and artists.
I resisted self-promotion and branding for the longest time until one day I realized that although the idea of being ‘discovered’ is romantic, in reality, especially in this day and age, you have to do the dirty work yourself.
Push it out there
“No one is going to see your work and appreciate it unless you push it out there. And the moment I went in that direction, good things started coming my way”
✒ Nadia Nizamudin – Interview Sarahk Benning
Promoting your art
“You need to be a self-starter and part of that is not having a fear of promoting your own work or believing in yourself as much as others. I encourage artists all the time to stage their own exhibits or open their own galleries. It’s a huge waste of time to sit around and wait to be “discovered”
✒ Indira Cesarine – Interview The New York Optimist – Photo Daniela Federici
Integrating criticism
“People, especially on the Internet, are so open about their feelings. You will never say that to somebody’s face, but the whole criticism is integrated into my mind because I read the comments. This is true for everyone on the Internet, everyone is gonna get trolled or bullied or whatever “
Negativity and positivity
“I am gonna choose to take a positive direction on it. And then still even after that, I get bombarded by those polarizing comments. And then, it’s a kind of poison to listen to negativity but it’s also a little bit of poison to listen to positivity as well. Because they can get into your head, and that’s a kind of a pitfall of an artist as well.”
Fake art
“So now I am kind of thinking the direction is “Fake Art”. And that’s kind of weird to say my art is fake art puts that idea out there, for me obviously, I don’t think it’s fake art but a lot of people do, and so, to address that and to put that as a leading statement I think it’s kind of interesting because it’s almost like we gonna start to talk about this before you even have talked about it.”
✒ Callen Schaub
An artist has to risk failure
“I realized that as simple as this notion sounds, there’s actually a real challenge involved. Why? Because you have to risk failure and embarrassment to show who you are within the thing you’re making”
✒ Howard Sherman
Making by hand
“What does it mean to make by hand, to make with a single body, when the influence and the impact of distance in the proximity of our daily lives have changed everything?”
✒ Ann Hamilton
When we build
“We choose where to live, what to surround ourselves with, what to spend our time and energy on.
We make our world what it is and we become the kind of people who live in it.
When we’re gone all that’s left of us is what we’ve made.
The things you and I make may not leave a visible footprint on the earth but everything we make takes up space, creates noise, competes for attention.”
A dent in the Universe
“We all have an idea, we all have something that we want to make for no other reason than we want it to exist.
Something small, meaningful,
Now what we get to do when we leave here
We get to go make things
Things that nudge the world a little bit on what we hope is the right direction.
We get to put a dent in the Universe.
This is a great job.”
✒ Wilson Miner, 2011 Build Conference in Belfast
Mentioning Robert Irwin
Positive outcome of Lockdown
“During the plague, Newton spent full-time on the studies and experiments that would lead him to develop his theories on calculus, optics and gravity.”
✒ Emily Nussbaum ‘s tweet
The Do’s and Don’ts of Social Media for Artists
“Best people to get criticism from are the people who have a stake in your success and failure.
.
they are not going to flippantly lob criticisms because if they do that and it damages you it damages them. But if they see that there’s something you’re really doing wrong here, they will come to you with criticism because it’s a matter of extended protection, self-protection… yeah. So those are the people who have a stake if they have a stake in your success and failure.”
✒ Draftsmen S2E25 (at 72:54)
Stan Prokopenko and Marshall Vandruff