Inspirational Quotes

I am a visual artist, and am better with color/design/images etc. than I am with words, so when I come across a quotation that resonates with me and with my philosophy of making art, I make note of it. Often I will post it in my studio so that I can see it (and be inspired) every day.

The following are a few of my current favorites:

“The advice I like to give young artists, or really anyone who will listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration.  Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work.  If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work.  All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself.  Things occur to you.  If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens.  But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction.  Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive.  You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case.”

                        Chuck Close

“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” – William Morris.❤

“Self discipline without talent can often achieve astounding results, whereas talent without self discipline inevitably dooms itself to failure.”

Sydney Harris

“The moment you create something you no longer have complete control over it.  The book belongs to the reader, the painting to the viewer, the song to the listener, and each of those people’s reactions is as valid to them as the intention is to the artist.  When you share a piece of yourself you lose hold of it, and in that, something greater is born.”

Francesco Marciuliano

“The virtue of the arts is that one never masters one’s form.  The challenge goes on right to the end.  One is held by curiosity: What is the next thing to be learned?”

Gore Vidal