Art and Inspiration Quotations by Artists with Their Art

While designing, developing and maintaining The Artistry of Jacques Pepin website, I was always coming across art and inspiration quotations. I began collecting them and, eventually, started to match them with the artists’ paintings. You can click through the thumbnails below to see them larger. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

Graphic Design For The Artistry of Jacques Pepin

“Great art picks up where nature ends.” Marc Chagall

“I shut my eyes in order to see.” Paul Gaugin

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

“I have a flood of ideas in my mind. I just follow my vision.” Yayoi Kusama

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

“Art is never finished, only abandoned.” Leonardo da Vinci

“An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.” James McNeill Whistler

“I am independent! I can live alone and I love to work.” Mary Cassat

“Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment.” Claude Monet

“Art is a line around your thoughts.” Gustav Klimt

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

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

“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’Keefe

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

“Painting is easy when you don’t know how, but very difficult when you do.” Edgar Degas

“If I could say it in words there would be no reason to paint.” Edward Hopper

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

“Creativity takes courage.” Henri Matisse

“Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing.” Georgia O’Keefe

“To my mind one does not put oneself in place of the past, one only adds a new link.” Paul Cezanne

“In art, what we want is the certainty that one spark of original genius shall not be extinguished.” Mary Cassat

“There are no rules. That is how art is born, how breakthroughs happen. Go against the rules or ignore the rules. That is what invention is about.” Helen Frankenthaler

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

“The richness I achieve comes from nature, the source of my inspiration.” Claude Monet

“It is important to express oneself...provided the feelings are real and are taken from you own experience.” Berthe Morisot

“I hold that the perfection of form and beauty is contained in the sum of all men.” Albrecht Durer

“There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.” Vincent van Gogh

“The true use of art is, first, to cultivate the artist’s own spiritual nature.” George Innes

“Painting is the grandchild of nature. It is related to God.” Rembrandt van Rijn

“Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” Edgar Degas

“Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist.” Renee Magritte

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

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

“Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun.” Pablo Picasso

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Every good painter paints what he is.” Jackson Pollock

“If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing.” Marc Chagall

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

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

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

Graphic Design: Paul Kazmercyk | Photography: Online Stock Images: iStockPhoto, 123RF, GraphicStock | Client: The Artistry of Jacques Pepin

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