Shot in the Art

Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling.  ~G.K. Chesterton

Artists can color the sky red because they know it's blue.  Those of us who aren't artists must color things the way they really are or people might think we're stupid.  ~Jules Feiffer

Listen carefully to first criticisms made of your work.  Note just what it is about your work that critics don't like - then cultivate it.  That's the only part of your work that's individual and worth keeping.  ~Jean Cocteau

Art is spirituality in drag.  ~Jennifer Yane

Great art is as irrational as great music.  It is mad with its own loveliness.  ~George Jean Nathan, House of Satan

Everything in creation has its appointed painter or poet and remains in bondage like the princess in the fairy tale 'til its appropriate liberator comes to set it free.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

The buttocks are the most aesthetically pleasing part of the body because they are non-functional.  Although they conceal an essential orifice, these pointless globes are as near as the human form can ever come to abstract art.  ~Kenneth Tynan


The artist is the opposite of the politically minded individual, the opposite of the reformer, the opposite of the idealist.  The artist does not tinker with the universe, he recreates it out of his own experience and understanding of life.  ~Henry Miller




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

Very few people possess true artistic ability.  It is therefore both unseemly and unproductive to irritate the situation by making an effort.  If you have a burning, restless urge to write or paint, simply eat something sweet and the feeling will pass.  ~Fran Lebowitz

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




Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression.  ~Isaac Bashevis Singer

Art is the only way to run away without leaving home.  ~Twyla Tharp

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




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