Great artists, painters and sculptors
about creativity

Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.
Leonardo da Vinci (April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519), Italian Renaissance painter and polymath

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

All our knowledge has its origin in our perceptions.
Leonardo da Vinci

Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master.
Leonardo da Vinci

The painter’s mind is a copy of the divine mind, since it operates freely in creating the many kinds of animals, plants, fruits, landscapes, countrysides, ruins, and awe-inspiring places.
Leonardo da Vinci

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
Leonardo da Vinci

The men of experiment are like the ant; they only collect and use. But the bee . . . gathers its materials from the flowers of the garden and of the field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own.
Leonardo da Vinci

The eye sees a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination awake.
Leonardo da Vinci

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

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

A good painter has two main objects to paint, man and the intention of his soul. The former is easy, the latter hard as he has to represent it by the attitude and movement of the limbs. Leonardo da Vinci
How painting surpasses all human works by reason of the subtle possibilities which it contains.
Leonardo da Vinci

From this [drawing], the treasure secretly gathered in your heart will become evident through your creative work.
Albrecht Durer (May 21,1471 – April 6,1528), German painter

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

I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.
Michelangelo Buonarroti (March 6, 1475 – February 18, 1564), Italian Renaissance sculptor, painter

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

Art lives on constraint and dies of freedom.
Michelangelo Buonarroti

Critique by creating.
Michelangelo Buonarroti

The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.
Michelangelo Buonarroti

The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.
Michelangelo Buonarroti

Every beauty which is seen here below by persons of perception resembles more than anything else that celestial source from which we all are come . . .
Michelangelo Buonarroti

A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.
Michelangelo Buonarroti

Trifles make perfection, but perfection is no trifle.
Michelangelo Buonarroti

Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I can accomplish.
Michelangelo Buonarroti

A great sculpture can roll down a hill without breaking.
Michelangelo Buonarroti

The painter must always seek the essence of things, always represent the essential characteristics and emotions of the person he is painting.
Titian (c. 1488/1490 –August 27, 1576), Italian painter

A good painter needs only three colours: black, white and red.
Titian

It is not bright colours but good drawing that makes figures beautiful.
Titian

Painting done under pressure by artists without the necessary talent can only give rise to formlessness, as painting is a profession that requires peace of mind.
Titian

My talent is such that no undertaking, however vast in size… has ever surpassed my courage.
Peter Paul Rubens  (June 28, 1577 –May 30, 1640), was a German-born Flemish  painter

I would rather be the first painter of common things than second in the higher art.
Diego Velazquez (baptised June 6, 1599 – August 6, 1660), Spanish painter

Painting is the grandchild of nature. It is related to God.
Rembrandt ( July 15, 1606 – October 4, 1669),  Dutch painter

A painting is finished when the artist says it is finished. Rembrandt
For in these two paintings the greatest and most natural movement has been expressed, which is also the main reason why they have taken so long to execute.
Rembrandt

Without atmosphere a painting is nothing.
Rembrandt

Could we teach taste or genius by rules, they would be no longer taste and genius.
Joshua Reynolds (July 16,  1723 –February 23, 1792), English painter

A mere copier of nature can never produce anything great.
Joshua Reynolds

Do not be troubled for a language, cultivate your soul and she will show herself.
Eugene Delacroix (April 26, 1798 –August 13, 1863), French artist

Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.
Eugene Delacroix

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

The source of genius is imagination alone, the refinement of the senses that sees what others do not see, or sees them differently.
Eugene Delacroix

Painting is the representation of visible forms. The essence of realism is its negation of the ideal.
Gustave Courbet (June 10, 1819 –December 31, 1877), French painter

The beautiful is in nature, and it is encountered under the most diverse forms of reality. Once it is found it belongs to art, or rather to the artist who discovers it.
Gustave Courbet

Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing.
Camille Pissarro (July 10, 1830 –November 13, 1903), Danish-French painter

There is only one true thing: instantly paint what you see. When you’ve got it, you’ve got it. When you haven’t, you begin again. All the rest is humbug.
Édouard Manet (January 23, 1832 –April 30, 1883), French painter

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.
Édouard Manet

No one can be a painter unless he cares for painting above all else.
Édouard Manet

One must be of one’s time and paint what one sees.
Édouard Manet

I need to work to feel well.
Édouard Manet

There are no lines in nature, only areas of colour, one against another.
Édouard Manet

Above all keep your colours fresh!
Édouard Manet

An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.
James McNeill Whistler (July 10, 1834 – July 17, 1903) was an American-born, British-based artist

Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.
Edgar Degas (July 19, 1834 –September 27, 1917), French painter

Painting is easy for those that do not know how, but very difficult for those that do!
Edgar Degas

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

A painting requires a little mystery, some vagueness, some fantasy. When you always make your meaning perfectly plain you end up boring people.
Edgar Degas

What they call talent is nothing but the capacity for doing continuous work in the right way.
Winslow Homer (February 24, 1836 – September 29, 1910), American artist

We live in a rainbow of chaos.
Paul Cezanne (January 19, 1839 – October 22,  1906), French painter

The painter must enclose himself within his work; he must respond not with words, but with paintings.
Paul Cezanne

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

I am the primitive of the method I have invented.
Paul Cezanne 

What is one to think of those fools who tell one that the artist is always subordinate to nature? Art is a harmony parallel with nature.
Paul Cézanne

Painting from nature is not copying the object; it is realizing one’s sensations.
Paul Cézanne

When I judge art, I take my painting and put it next to a God made object like a tree or flower. If it clashes, it is not art.
Paul Cézanne

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

All my life I have worked to be able to earn my living, but I thought that one could do good painting without attracting attention to one’s private life. Certainly, an artist wishes to raise himself intellectually as much as possible, but the man must remain obscure. The pleasure must be found in the work.
Paul Cezanne

I like all those painters who loved and had a strong feeling for nature.
Alfred Sisley (October 30, 1839 –January 29, 1899), French- British painter

I invent nothing, I rediscover.
Auguste Rodin (November 12, 1840 –November 17, 1917), French sculptor.

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

I waited for the idea to consolidate, for the grouping and composition of themes to settle themselves in my brain. When I felt I held enough cards I determined to pass to action, and did so.
Claude Monet (November 14, 1840 –December 5, 1926),  French painter

The effect of sincerity is to give one’s work the character of a protest. The painter being concerned only with conveying his impression, simply seeks to be himself and no one else.
Claude Monet

I am following Nature without being able to grasp her, I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.
Claude Monet

I would advise young artists . . . to paint as they can, as long as they can, without being afraid of painting badly . . . . If their painting doesn’t improve by itself, it means that nothing can be done – and I wouldn’t do anything.
Claude Monet

No one is an artist unless he carries his picture in his head before painting it, and is sure of his method and composition.
Claude Monet

To see we must forget the name of the thing we are looking at.
Claude Monet

Colour is my day-long obsession, joy and torment.
Claude Monet

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

It is important to express oneself…provided the feelings are real and are taken from you own experience.
Berthe Morisot (January 14, 1841 – March 2, 1895), French painter

If the painter works directly from nature, he ultimately looks for nothing but momentary effects; he does not try to compose, and soon he gets monotonous.
Auguste Renoir (February 25, 1841 – December 3, 1919),  French  painter

The work of art must seize upon you, wrap you up in itself and carry you away. It is the means by which the artist conveys his passion. It is the current which he puts forth which sweeps you along in his passion.
Auguste Renoir

In painting, as in the other arts, there’s not a single process, no matter how insignificant, which can be reasonably made into a formula. You come to nature with your theories, and she knocks them all flat.
Auguste Renoir

You come to nature with all her theories, and she knocks them all flat.
Auguste Renoir

I’ve been forty years discovering that the queen of all colors is black.
Auguste Renoir

I shut my eyes in order to see.
Paul Gauguin (June 7, 1848 –May 8, 1903), French Post-Impressionist painter

Do not copy nature too much.  Art is an abstraction.
Paul Gauguin

It is good to love many things, for therein lies true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done.
Vincent van Gogh (March 30, 1853 –July 29, 1890), Dutch post-Impressionist painter

I am seeking. I am striving. I am in it with all my heart.
Vincent van Gogh

If you hear a voice within you say, ‘You cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.
Vincent van Gogh

I feel such a creative force in me: I am convinced that there will be a time when, let us say, I will make something good every day , on a regular basis….I am doing my very best to make every effort because I am longing so much to make beautiful things. But beautiful things mean painstaking work, disappointment, and perseverance.
Vincent van Gogh

It is better to be high-spirited even though one makes more mistakes, than to be narrow-minded and all too prudent. Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination; do not become the slave of your model.
Vincent van Gogh

As a suffering creature, I cannot do without something greater than I – something that is my life – the power to create.
Vincent van Gogh

It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to. . . . The feeling for the things themselves, for reality, is more important than the feeling for pictures.
Vincent van Gogh

What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?
Vincent van Gogh

A good picture is equivalent to a good deed.
Vincent van Gogh

One may have a blazing hearth in one’s soul and yet no one ever come to sit by it. Passersby see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on the way.
Vincent van Gogh

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

Paintings have a life of their own that derives from the painter’s soul.
Vincent van Gogh

The only time I feel alive is when I’m painting.
Vincent van Gogh

I want to touch people with my art. I want them to say ‘he feels deeply, he feels tenderly.
Vincent van Gogh

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

As practice makes perfect, I cannot but make progress; each drawing one makes, each study one paints, is a step forward.
Vincent van Gogh

Art is harmony. Harmony is the analogy of contrary and of similar elements of tone, of color and of line, conditioned by the dominate key, and under the influence of a particular light, in gay, calm, or sad combinations.
Georges Seurat (December 2, 1859 –March 29, 1891), French painter

Originality depends only on the character of the drawing and the vision peculiar to each artist.
Georges Seurat

Painting is the art of hollowing a surface.
Georges Seurat

Some say they see poetry in my paintings; I see only science.
Georges Seurat

The anarchist painter is not the one who will create anarchist pictures,
but the one who will fight with all his individuality against official conventions.
Paul Signac (November 11, 1863 –August 15, 1935),  French painter

Youth must go ahead and prosper. These young painters are all very talented people, but they all paint frescoes.
Edvard Munch (December 12, 1863 -January 23,  1944), Norwegian painter

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

No longer shall I paint interiors with men reading and women knitting. I will paint living people who breathe and feel and suffer and love.
Edvard Munch

I paint things as they are. I don’t comment. I record.
 Henri De Toulouse Lautrec (November 24, 1864 –September 9,  1901), French painter

In our time there are many artists who do something because it is new; they see their value and their justification in this newness. They are deceiving themselves; novelty is seldom the essential. This has to do with one thing only; making a subject better from its intrinsic nature.
Henri de Toulouse Lautrec

The true work of art is born from the Artist: a mysterious, enigmatic, and mystical creation. It detaches itself from him, it acquires an autonomous life, becomes a personality, an independent subject, animated with a spiritual breath, the living subject of a real existence of being.
Wassily Kandinsky (December 16, 1866 –December 13, 1944),  Russian painter

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

Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies, the soul is the piano with many strings.
Wassily Kandinsky

The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul.
Wassily Kandinsky

I applied streaks and blobs of colours onto the canvas with a palette knife and I made them sing with all the intensity I could…
Wassily Kandinsky

Creativity takes courage.
Henri Matisse (December 31, 1869 –November 3, 1954), French painter

Creation is the artist’s true function. But it would be a mistake to ascribe creative power to an inborn talent. Creation begins with vision. The artist has to look at everything as though seeing it for the first time.
Henri Matisse

There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted.
Henri Matisse

I don’t paint things. I only paint the difference between things.
Henri Matisse

You must forget all your theories, all your ideas before the subject. What part of these is really your own will be expressed in your expression of the emotion awakened in you by the subject.
Henri Matisse

I do not literally paint that table, but the emotion it produces upon me.
Henri Matisse

One gets into a state of creativity by conscious work. To prepare one’s work is first to nourish one’s feelings by studies which have a certain analogy with the picture, and it is through this that the choice of elements can be made. It is these studies which permit the painter to free his unconscious mind.
Henri Matisse

Drawing is like making an expressive gesture with the advantage of permanence.
Henri Matisse

A work of art must carry in itself its complete significance and impose it upon the beholder even before he can identify the subject-matter…
Henri Matisse

It has bothered me all my life that I do not paint like everybody else.
Henri Matisse

I would like to recapture that freshness of vision which is characteristic of extreme youth when all the world is new to it.
Henri Matisse

What I dream of is an art of equilibrium, purity and tranquility, devoid of upsetting or troubling subject matter …
Henri Matisse

Time extracts various values from a painter’s work.
When these values are exhausted the pictures are forgotten,
and the more a picture has to give, the greater it is.
Henri Matisse

For me, painting is a way to forget life. It is a cry in the night, a strangled laugh.
Georges Rouault (May 27, 1871 –February 13,1958), French painter

Art is not made for anybody and is, at the same time, for everybody.
Piet Mondrian (March 7, 1872 – February 1, 1944),  Dutch painter

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

Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist.
Piet Mondrian

If you want to have clean ideas, change them as often as you change your shirts.
Francis Picabia (January 22, 1879 –November 30, 1953), French painter

Painters were also attorneys, happy storytellers of anecdote,
psychologists, botanists, zoologists, archaeologists, engineers, but there were no creative painters.
Kazimir Malevich (February 23, 1879 –May 15, 1935), Russian painter

Color possesses me. I don’t have to pursue it. It will possess me always, I know it. That is the meaning of this happy hour: Color and I are one. I am a painter.
Paul Klee (December 18,1879 –June 29,1940),  German-Swiss painter

Art does not reproduce what is visible; it makes things visible.
Paul Klee

A line is a dot that went for a walk.
Paul Klee

I paint in order not to cry.
Paul Klee

The more horrifying this world becomes, the more art becomes abstract.
Paul Klee

I do not seek. I find.
Pablo Picasso (October 25, 1881 –April 8, 1973) Spanish painter and sculptor

Everything you can imagine is real.
Pablo Picasso

Every act of creation begins with an act of destruction.
Pablo Picasso

God is really another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant and the cat. He has no real style. He just goes on trying other things.
Pablo Picasso

If I paint a wild horse, you might not see the horse… but surely you will see the wildness!
Pablo Picasso

The urge to destroy is also a creative urge.
Pablo Picasso

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

Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not.
Pablo Picasso

Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
Pablo Picasso

Art is a lie that helps us to realize the truth.
Pablo Picasso

There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot, but there are others who, thanks to their art and intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.
Pablo Picasso

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

Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.
Pablo Picasso

I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else.
Pablo Picasso

It takes a very long time to become young.
Pablo Picasso

They ought to put out the eyes of painters as they
do goldfinches in order that they can sing better.
Pablo Picasso

I don’t say everything, but I paint everything.
Pablo Picasso

Art is made to disturb. Science reassures. There is only one valuable thing in art: the thing you cannot explain.
Georges Braque (May 13, 1882 –August 31,1963), French painter and sculptor

Reality only reveals itself when it is illuminated by a ray of poetry.
Georges Braque

If you could say it in words, there’d be no reason to paint.
Edward Hopper (July 22, 1882 – May 15, 1967), American painter

If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing.
Marc Chagall (July 6, 1887 –March 28, 1985), Russian painter

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

I work in whatever medium likes me at the moment.
Marc Chagall

Great art picks up where nature ends.
Marc Chagall

When I’m finishing a picture I hold some God-made object up to it – a rock, a flower, or a tree branch — as a final test. If the painting stands up beside a thing man cannot make, the painting is authentic. If there’s a clash, it’s bad art.
Marc Chagall

I don’t believe in art. I believe in artists.
Marcel Duchamp (July 28, 1887 – October 2, 1968), French-American painter and sculptor

I found I could say things with colour and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way-things I had no words for.
Georgia O’Keeffe (November 15, 1887 – March 6, 1986),  American artist

So I said to myself-I’ll paint what I see-what the flower is to me but I’ll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking the time to look at it-I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers.
Georgia O’Keeffe

I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at – not copy it.
Georgia O’Keeffe

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 (October 16, 1890 – March 31, 1976), American photographer

Creativity is that marvelous capacity to grasp mutually distinct realities and draw a spark from their juxtaposition.
Max Ernst (April 2, 1891 –April 1, 1976), German painter, sculptor and poet

I feel the need of attaining the maximum of intensity with the minimum of means. It is this which has led me to give my painting a character of even greater bareness.
Joan Miro (April 20, 1893 – December 25, 1983), Spanish painter

The observation of nature is part of an artist’s life, it enlarges his form [and] knowledge, keeps him fresh and from working only by formula, and feeds inspiration.
Henry Moor (July 30, 1898 – August 31, 1986), English sculptor

I find in all the artists that I admire most a disturbing element, a distortion, giving evidence of a struggle . . . . In great art, this conflict is hidden, it is unresolved. All that is bursting with energy is disturbing – not perfect.
Henry Moor

The creative habit is like a drug. The particular obsession changes, but the excitement, the thrill of your creation lasts.
Henry Moor

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

There is a right physical size for every idea.
Henry Moor

It is a mistake for a sculptor or a painter to speak or write very often about his job. It releases tension needed for his work.
Henry Moor

Longing for creativity precedes the urge to create itself, and this is the first spark that sets in motion the mechanism for making images.
M. C. Escher (June 17, 1898 –March 27, 1972), Dutch graphic artist

What I give form to in daylight is only one per cent of what I have seen in darkness.
M.C. Escher

Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist.
Rene Magritte (November 21, 1898 –August 15, 1967), Belgian surrealist artist

Life obliges me to do something, so I paint.
Rene Magritte

I never feel age … If you have creative work, you don’t have age or time.
Louise Nevelson (September 23, 1899 – April 17, 1988), American sculptor

Painting is so poetic, while sculpture is more logical and scientific and makes you worry about gravity.
Mark Rothko (September 25, 1903 – February 25, 1970), American painter

It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academicism.
Mark Rothko

I also hang the pictures low rather than high, and particularly in the case of the largest ones, often as close to the floor as is feasible, for that is the way they are painted.
Mark Rothko

Art is an adventure into an unknown world, which can only be explored by those willing to take the risks.
Mark Rothko

The attitude that nature is chaotic and that the artist puts order into it is a very absurd point of view, I think. All that we can hope for is to put some order into ourselves.
Willem de Kooning (April 24, 1904 – March 19, 1997), Dutch American artist

Whatever an artist’s personal feelings are, as soon as an artist fills a certain area on the canvas or circumscribes it, he becomes historical. He acts from or upon other artists.
Willem de Kooning

You have to systematically create confusion, it sets creativity free. Everything that is contradictory creates life.
Salvador Dalí (May 11, 1904 – January 23, 1989), Spanish surrealist painter

Have no fear of perfection, you’ll never reach it.
Salvador Dali

Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision.
Salvador Dalí

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

Mistakes are almost always of a sacred nature. Never try to correct them. On the contrary: rationalize them, understand them thoroughly. After that, it will be possible for you to sublimate them.
Salvador Dali

I never paint dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality.
Frida Kahlo (July 6, 1907 – July 13, 1954), Mexican painter

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.
Francis Bacon (October 28, 1909 –April 28, 1992), Irish-born British figurative painter

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

I foresee it and yet I hardly ever carry it out as I foresee it. It transforms itself by the actual paint. I don’t in fact know very often what the paint will do, and it does many things which are very much better than I could make it do.
Francis Bacon

Before I start painting I have a slightly ambiguous feeling: happiness is a special excitement because unhappiness is always possible a moment later.
Francis Bacon

The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through.
Jackson Pollock (January 28, 1912 – August 11, 1956), American painter

Today painters do not have to go to a subject matter outside of themselves. Most modern painters work from a different source. They work from within.
Jackson Pollock

Every good painter paints what he is.
Jackson Pollock

The strangeness will wear off and I think we will discover the deeper meanings in modern art.
Jackson Pollock

It [abstract art] should be enjoyed just as music is enjoyed – after a while you may like it or you may not.
Jackson Pollock

When I am painting I have a general notion as to what I am about. I can control the flow of paint: there is no accident.
Jackson Pollock

In a successful painting everything is integral – all the parts belong to the whole. If you remove an aspect or element you are removing its wholeness.
Richard Diebenkorn (April 22, 1922 – March 30, 1993), American painter

Art doesn’t have to be pretty. It has to be meaningful.
Duane Hanson (January 17, 1925 – January 6, 1996), American artist

Painting is a means of self-enlightenment.
John Olsen (born 21 January 1928), an Australian artist.

The essential of painting is that something, that ‘ethereal glue,’ that intermediary product which the artist secrets with all his creative being and which he has the power to place, to encrust, to impregnate into the pictorial stuff of the painting.
Yves Klein (April 28, 1928 –June 6, 1962), French artist

Everything has its beauty, but not everyone sees it.
Andy Warhol (August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987), American artist

Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery.
Andy Warhol

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

Art is much less important than life, but what a poor life without it.
Jasper Johns (born May 15, 1930), American painter

When you start a painting, it is somewhat outside you. At the conclusion, you seem to move inside the painting.
Fernando Botero (born April 19, 1932), Colombian figurative artist

Never trust an art dealer who’ll sit in a room for more than ten minutes with a crooked picture.
Brett Whiteley (7 April 1939 – 15 June 1992), Australian artist

I am rather like a travelling salesman. I deal in ideas. I do much more for people than just paint them pictures.
Martin Kippenberger (February 25, 1953 –March 7, 1997), German artist

A Good artist has less time than ideas.
Martin Kippenberger

To fly we have to have resistance.
Maya Ying Lin (born on October 5, 1959), American architect and sculptor

Own your creativity. You are creative with the same juice that flows in all of life. The question is not whether you are creative enough but whether you will free yourself to express it.
Ian Roberts, Canadian-American painter, the author of the book “Creative Authenticity”