150 Art Quotes To Bring Out Your Inner Artist

Here are 150 of the best art quotes I could find. What’s my goal? To inspire you to keep creating, building and bringing out your inner artist. You’ll discover sayings by famous artists like Picasso, da Vinci, van Gogh, Monet, and more. Enjoy!

The chief enemy of creativity is ‘good’ sense. Pablo Picasso

Bring your humanity to your art. Bring your art to humanity. Maxime Lagacé

Art deteriorates when it is done for the audience. James Pierce

In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different. Coco Chanel

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

The great artist is the simplifier. Vincent van Gogh

I had so much fire in me and so many plans. Claude Monet

The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to. Frida Kahlo

Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is. Jackson Pollock

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

To draw you must close your eyes and sing. Pablo Picasso

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures. Henry Ward Beecher

Never worry about being obsessive. I like obsessive people. Obsessive people make great art. Susan Sontag

In any art you’re allowed to steal anything if you can make it better. Ernest Hemingway

In the mind of every artist there is a masterpiece. Kai Greene

Related

• 100 Writing Quotes From The Best Writers In The World
• 100 Music Quotes From The Best Musicians In The World
• 100 Humanity Quotes That Will Touch Your Heart

The Best Art Quotes

Go to table of contents

The world always seems brighter when you’ve just made something that wasn’t there before. Neil Gaiman

Let’s get a little crazy here. Bob Ross

Every act of creation is first an act of destruction. Pablo Picasso

We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth. John F. Kennedy

I think being different, going against the grain of society is the greatest thing in the world. Elijah Wood

You can look at a picture for a week and never think of it again. You can also look at the picture for a second and think of it all your life. Joan Miro

Art is meant to disturb, science reassures. Georges Braque

If I paint something, I don’t want to have to explain what it is. Bob Ross

An artist should never be a prisoner of himself, prisoner of style, prisoner of reputation, prisoner of success. Henri Matisse

I never paint dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality. Frida Kahlo

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. Scott Adams

It is better to be high-spirited even though one makes more mistakes, than to be narrow-minded and all to prudent. Vincent van Gogh

The power of nature is such that it’s what all art strives to be. The more we can get in tune with the harmony of the planet, the more our art can benefit from that relationship. Rick Rubin

Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art. Leonardo da Vinci

The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize. Robert Hughes

Tell your own story, and you will be interesting. Louise Bourgeois

All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story; to vomit the anguish up. James Baldwin

Our primary function is to create an emotion and our secondary function is to sustain that emotions. Alfred Hitchcock

Art is standing with one hand extended into the universe and one hand extended into the world, and letting ourselves be a conduit for passing energy. Albert Einstein

You have to systematically create confusion, it sets creativity free. Everything that is contradictory creates life. Salvador Dalí

I have already settled it for myself so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free. Georgia O’Keeffe

To be an artist, you need to exist in a world of silence. Louise Bourgeois

The best reason to paint is that there is no reason to paint. Keith Haring

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. Emile Zola

Art is not a mirror to hold up to society, but a hammer with which to shape it. Leon Trotsky

Creativity gives hope that there can be a worthwhile idea. Edward de Bono

In the creative state a man is taken out of himself. E. M. Forster

I wanted to start a revolution, using art to build the sort of society I myself envisioned. Yayoi Kusama

A work is finished when an artist realizes his intentions. Rembrandt

Art wasn’t supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something. Rainbow Rowell

No one cares until you’re doing it for yourself. Jack Butcher (Source)

The works must be conceived with fire in the soul but executed with clinical coolness. Joan Miro

Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things. Edgar Degas

I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Dr. Seuss

Part 2. Art Quotes That Are…

The Most Famous Art Quotes (Picasso, da Vinci, Einstein, etc.)

Go to table of contents

Art is never finished, only abandoned. Leonardo da Vinci

Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen. Leonardo da Vinci

Art is the concrete representation of our most subtle feelings. Agnes Martin

Bad artists copy. Good artists steal. Pablo Picasso

Everything you can imagine is real. Pablo Picasso

I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process. Vincent van Gogh

I am my own experiment. I am my own work of art. Madonna

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. Albert Einstein

I dream of painting and then I paint my dream. Vincent van Gogh

The only art I’ll ever study is stuff that I can steal from. David Bowie

If you hear a voice within you saying, ”You are not a painter,” then by all means paint… and that voice will be silenced. Vincent van Gogh

Art is my life and my life is art. Yoko Ono

Every artist was first an amateur. Ralph Waldo Emerson

The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it’s dead for you. Oscar Wilde

A picture is a poem without words. Horace

We don’t make mistakes. We just have happy accidents. Bob Ross

Without tradition art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation it is a corpse. Winston Churchill

I guess I’m a little weird. I like to talk to trees and animals. That’s okay though; I have more fun than most people. Bob Ross

You don’t take a photograph, you make it. Ansel Adams

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

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

The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude. Friedrich Nietzsche

I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best. Frida Kahlo

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted. Martin Luther King Jr

Short Art Quotes

Go to table of contents

One-liners, short art quotes, thoughts, sayings, and captions for your bio, social status, self-talk, motto, mantra, signs, posters, wallpapers, and backgrounds.

Beauty will save the world. Dosteovsky

Painter, paint! Salvador Dalí

Art must destroy violence, only it can do it. Leo Tolstoy

Art should tell what the system does not. @AmuseChimp

Art is the expression of the profoundest thoughts in the simplest way. Albert Einstein

Art is to look at not to criticize. Edgar Allen Poe

Art is a way of recognizing oneself. Louise Bourgeois

If you find yourself broken then make art with the pieces. Chris Ruden (Source)

Personality is everything in art and poetry. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I shut my eyes in order to see. Paul Gauguin

Art = A mad search for individualism. Paul Gauguin

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

You study, you learn, but you guard the original naivete. Henri Matisse

Art lives from constraints and dies from freedom. Leonardo da Vinci

Painting is silent poetry. Plutarch

Controversy is part of the nature of art and creativity. Yoko Ono

Every good painter paints what he is. Jackson Pollock

A true masterpiece does not tell everything. Albert Camus

Intensity is all that matters in painting. John Piper

To be an artist is to believe in life. Henry Moore

Art is a lie that makes us realize truth. Pablo Picasso

Art is the elimination of the unnecessary. Pablo Picasso

Art is coming face to face with yourself. Jackson Pollock

The painter has the Universe in his mind and hands. Leonardo da Vinci

The artist sees what others only catch a glimpse of. Leonardo da Vinci

To create one’s own world takes courage. Georgia O’Keeffe

I am not an adventurer by choice but by fate. Vincent van Gogh

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up. Pablo Picasso

It is absurd to look for perfection. Camille Pissarro

Knowing how to look is a way of inventing. Salvador Dalí

I’m in fine fettle and fired with a desire to paint. Claude Monet

Art must be life — it must belong to everybody. Marina Abramović

To create, one must first question everything. Eileen Gray

Everything starts from a dot. Wassily Kandinsky

To gain freedom is to gain simplicity. Joan Miro

The more I work, the more I want to work. Joan Miro

I work like a gardener. Joan Miro

At the heart of all great art is an essential melancholy. Federico Garcia Lorca

Inspirational Art Quotes

Go to table of contents

Art is either revolution or plagiarism. Paul Gauguin

Don’t pay any attention to what they write about you. Just measure it in inches. Andy Warhol

Inspiration does exist, but it must find you working. Pablo Picasso

Don’t be fooled by success and money. Don’t let anything come between you and your work. Louise Bourgeois

When you do things for their own sake, that’s when you create your best work. That’s when it’s art. Naval Ravikant

Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced. Leo Tolstoy

To be great, art has to point somewhere. Anne Lamott

The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying. Steven Pressfield (The War Of Art, Amazon book)

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery. Francis Bacon

All you need to paint is a few tools, a little instruction, and a vision in your mind. Bob Ross

A true artist is not one who is inspired but one who inspires others. Salvador Dalí

Make art that makes you happy. Make art that makes you better. Make art that makes you money. Make art that makes a difference. Sahil Lavingia

If I’m going to be anything more than average, if anyone is going to remember me, then I need to go further, in art, in life, in everything! Salvador Dalí

The only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. Steve Jobs

It is not a torment to be an artist. It is a privilege. Louise Bourgeois

Art is the queen of all sciences communicating knowledge to all the generations of the world. Leonardo da Vinci

If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him. John F. Kennedy

My role in society, or any artist’s or poet’s role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all. John Lennon

He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist. Francis of Assisi

Instead of worrying about what people say of you, why not spend time trying to accomplish something they will admire. Dale Carnegie

It’s on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly. Claude Monet

All great art contains at its center contemplation, a dynamic contemplation. Susan Sontag

I have been enlightened. I have fallen into poetry and it has swallowed me up. Keith Haring

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

Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere. Peter O’Toole

Stay firmly in your path and dare; be wild two hours a day. Paul Gauguin

The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose. James Baldwin

One must spoil as many canvases as one succeeds with. Vincent van Gogh

If I close my eyes, I see things better than with my eyes open. Henri Matisse

Related: 13 Ways To Be More Creative, According To Science (bustle.com)

Art Quotes: The Conclusion

Go to table of contents

There is no must in art because art is free. Wassily Kandinsky

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 possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something. Kurt Vonnegut

Let’s recap:

• Want to make good art? Put logic and judgment aside. Let it go.
• Want to make great art? Do it for yourself.
• Remember: there are no mistakes. Only lessons.
• The benefits of arts?
  • Less stress
  • Less depression
  • More confidence and self-esteem
• Simple ways to make art?
  • Draw
  • Paint
  • Sculpt
  • Make a collage
  • Write in a journal
  • Blog (on LinkedIn, Twitter, Medium, Quora, WordPress, etc.)
  • Design websites
  • Take photos
  • Make something UNexPECted, JUSt fOR FuN! 😄

Further Readings

• Topic: Education and Culture
• 100 Education Quotes That Will Inspire You To Keep Growing
• 100 Learning Quotes To Inspire You To Learn (Forever)
• 100 Curiosity Quotes To Increase Your Desire To Learn
• 18 Habits Of Highly Creative People | HuffPost Impact (huffpost.com)
• 8 Ways to Be More Creative Today, Backed by Science (shutterstock.com)
• 65 Growth Mindset Quotes (To Improve Your Life)
• 200 Travel Quotes To Feed Your Wanderlust
• 210 History Quotes That Will Surprise And Inspire You

What’s your art? What’s your favorite art quote? And remember: words can transform your life, if you find the right ones.