Inspiring Art Quotes to Ignite Your Creativity

"Where the spirit does not work with the hand there is no art."

- Leonardo DaVinci

"Creativity takes courage."

- Henri Matisse

"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up."

- Pablo Picasso

"Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one."

- Stella Adler

"If I could say it in words there would be no reason to paint."

- Edward Hopper

"Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known."

- Oscar Wilde

"hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

- Albert Einstein

"An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one."

- Charles Horton Cooley

"Painting is just another way of keeping a diary."

- Pablo Picasso

"The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live only as you can."

- Neil Gaiman

"To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it."

- Kurt Vonnegut

"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

"Inspiration does exist, but it must find you working."

- Pablo Picasso

"I dream of painting and then I paint my dream."

- Vincent van Gogh

"If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, will answer you: I am here to live out loud."

- Émile Zola

"A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art."

- Paul Cézanne

"The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity."

- Alberto Giacometti

"The emotions are sometimes so strong that I work without knowing it. The strokes come like speech."

- Vincent van Gogh

"I never paint dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality."

- Frida Kahlo

"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

"Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist."

- Pablo Picasso

"Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing."

- Georgia O'Keeffe

"Art is not what you see, but what you make others see."

- Edgar Degas

"The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something."

- Kurt Vonnegut

"Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination."

- Vincent van Gogh

"You can’t use up creativity. The more you use the more you have."

- Maya Angelou

"Learn the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist."

- Pablo Picasso

"Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures."

- Henry Ward Beecher

"I want to touch people with my art. I want them to say, ‘he feels deeply, he feels tenderly.”"

- Vincent van Gogh

"I would rather die of passion than of boredom."

- Vincent van Gogh

"An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision."

- James McNeill Whistler

"Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others."

- Albert Camus

"If you could say it in words there would be no reason to paint."

- Edward Hopper

"Art is the only way to run away without leaving home."

- Twyla Tharp

"Great things are done by a series of small things brought together."

- Vincent van Gogh

"There’s something really cool about taking oily coloured paste and pushing it around with these hairy sticks and making something that looks like you. That’s the magic of painting."

- Kehinde Wiley

"Art is a way of recognizing oneself."

- Louise Bourgeois

"Art is the longing of the soul for something better than itself."

- Friedrich Nietzsche

"To create one’s own world takes courage."

- Georgia O'Keeffe

"Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time."

- Thomas Merton

"I dream my paintings, and then they paint my dream."

- Vincent van Gogh

"Art is the stored honey of the human soul."

- Theodore Dreiser

"I am seeking. I am striving. I am in it with all my heart."

- Vincent van Gogh

"The day is an empty canvas, the shapes and colors are yours to choose."

- Alex Noble

"Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable."

- George Bernard Shaw

"Painting is easy when you don’t know how, but very difficult when you do."

- Edgar Degas

"Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen."

- Leonardo da Vinci

"I would like to paint the way a bird sings."

- Claude Monet

"Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life."

- Pablo Picasso

"All art requires courage."

- Anne Tucker

"Art is not a thing; it is a way."

- Elbert Hubbard

"If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all."

- Michelangelo

"Great art picks up where nature ends."

- Marc Chagall

"The only time I am truly in the Now is when I paint."

- Lori McNee

"Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better."

- Andre Gide

"The main thing is to be moved, to love, to hope, to tremble, to live."

- Auguste Rodin

"To be an artist is to believe in life."

- Henry Moore

"Every good painter paints what he is."

- Jackson Pollock

"The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance."

- Aristotle

"Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind."

- Dr. Seuss

"The artist’s world is limitless. It can be found anywhere, far from where he lives or a few feet away. It is always on his doorstep."

- Paul Strand

"The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless."

- Jean Jacques Rousseau

"A man paints with his brains and not with his hands."

- Michelangelo

"The object isn’t to make art, it’s to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable."

- Robert Henri

"I am happy to be alive as long as I can paint."

- Frida Kahlo

"The artist sees what others only catch a glimpse of."

- Leonardo da Vinci

"Nature is not only all that is visible to the eye, it also includes the inner pictures of the soul."

- Edvard Munch

"The goal of life is rapture. Art is the way we experience it."

- Joseph Campbell

"If I create from the heart, nearly everything works: if from the head, almost nothing."

- Marc Chagall

"The more I paint the more I like everything."

- Jean-Michel Basquiat

"A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing."

- George Bernard Shaw

"There is no must in art because art is free."

- Wassily Kandinsky

"Art is the journey of a free soul."

- Alev Oguz

"Art is a conversation with the world."

- Mariell Amélie

"Art is often born from inner struggle. Artists are often plagued by impulses they must express. Contentment does not seek action but struggle always seeks release."

- Eric Gibbons

"If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing."

- Marc Chagall

"Don’t be an art critic, but paint, there lies salvation."

- Paul Cézanne

"Art is the daughter of freedom."

- Friedrich Schiller

"Everything has its beauty but not everyone sees it."

- Confucius

"Art must be an expression of love or it is nothing."

- Marc Chagall

"The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration… 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."

- Chuck Close

"Some of the most unhappy artists, in the most difficult of situations, can create awe inspiring works of art."

- Eric Gibbons

"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

"No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination."

- Edward Hopper

"It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child."

- Pablo Picasso

"Art is never finished, only abandoned."

- Leonardo da Vinci

"Art is a lie that makes us realize truth."

- Pablo Picasso

"No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist."

- Oscar Wilde

"The chief enemy of creativity is ‘good’ sense."

- Pablo Picasso

"Art is not a thing, it is a way."

- Elbert Hubbard

"Color is the place where our brain and the universe meet."

- Paul Klee

"Art is a line around your thoughts."

- Gustav Klimt

"One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself."

- Leonardo da Vinci

"Do not fear mistakes, there are none."

- Miles Davis

"Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others."

- Jonathan Swift

"The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention."

- Julia Margaret Cameron

"I have no interest in making a work that doesn’t elicit a feeling."

- Kara Walker

"Look at life with the eyes of a child."

- Henri Matisse

"Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing."

- Salvador Dali

"Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together."

- John Ruskin

"It is important to express oneself...provided the feelings are real and are taken from you own experience."

- Berthe Morisot

"The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery."

- Francis Bacon

"They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself."

- Andy Warhol

"What art offers is space – a certain breathing room for the spirit."

- John Updike

"An artist is someone who produces things that people don’t need to have but that he – for some reason – thinks it would be a good idea to give them."

- Andy Warhol

"Creativity comes from a conflict of ideas."

- Donatella Versace

"The position of the artist is humble. He is essentially a channel."

- Piet Mondrian

"To send light into the darkness of men’s hearts – such is the duty of the artist."

- Schumman

"Creativity is magic. Don’t examine it too closely."

- Edward Albee

"Painting is the grandchild of nature. It is related to God."

- Rembrandt van Rijn

"Drawing is the artist’s most direct and spontaneous expression, a species of writing: it reveals, better than does painting, his true personality."

- Edgar Degas

"I invent nothing, I rediscover."

- Auguste Rodin

"It is not enough to know your craft – you have to have feeling. Science is all very well, but for us imagination is worth far more."

- Edouard Manet

"Life is pain, art is redemption."

- Brian Lee Jones

"Everything has its beauty, but not everyone sees it."

- Andy Warhol

"Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master."

- Leonardo da Vinci

"I paint for myself. I don’t know how to do anything else, anyway. Also, I have to earn my living, and occupy myself."

- Francis Bacon

"Painting is a means of self-enlightenment."

- John Olsen

"A good artist has less time than ideas."

- Martin Kippenberger

"If a man devotes himself to art, much evil is avoided that happens otherwise if one is idle."

- Albrecht Durer

"Art is everywhere, except it has to pass through a creative mind."

- Louise Nevelson

"When inspiration doesn’t come, I go halfway to meet it."

- Freud

"Artists are fiery, they do not weep!"

- Ludwig van Beethoven

"Consistency is the last resort of the unimaginative."

- Oscar Wilde

"A critic at my house sees some paintings. Greatly perturbed, he asks for my drawings. My drawings! Never! They are my letters, my secrets."

- Paul Gauguin

"He who wants to devote himself to painting, must begin by cutting off his tongue."

- Henri Matisse

"We all have at least 100,000 bad drawings inside of us. The sooner we get them out and onto paper, the sooner we’ll get to the good ones buried deep within."