OPINIONS THAT COUNT...

Art Lessons
Contemporary Art


Be yourself. An original is always worth more than a copy -  Unknown

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

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

Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one.  - Stella Adler

Painting is silent poetry. -  Plutarch

Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.  - Da Vinci

Art is the desire of man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in. - Amy Lowel

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. - Oscar Wilde

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

Anyone who says you can't see a thought simply doesn't know art. - Wynetka Ann Reynolds

What art offers is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit.  - John Updike

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

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

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

As far as I am concerned, a painting speaks for itself. What is the use of giving explanations, when all is said and done? A painter has only one language. - Pablo Picasso

I want to reach that condensation of sensations that constitutes a picture. - Henri Matisse

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

Art... does not take kindly to facts, is helpless to grapple with theories, and is killed outright by a sermon. - Agnes Repplier

As the sun colors flowers, so does art color life. - John Lubbock

Coloring outside the lines is a fine art.-  Kim Nance

The artist is a receptacle for the emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web. - Pablo Picasso

The true painter strives to paint what can only be seen through his world. - André Malr

The artist does not see things as they are, but as he is. - Alfred Tonnelle

While I recognize the necessity for a basis of observed reality... true art lies in a reality that is felt.  - Odilon Redon

The question of common sense is always what is it good for? - a question which would abolish the rose and be answered triumphantly by the cabbage. - James Russell Lowell

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

Art is when you hear a knocking from your soul - and you answer.  - Terri Guillemets

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, as far as it is able, follows nature, as a pupil imitates his master; thus your art must be, as it were, God's grandchild.  - Dante Alighieri

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

Art is Man's nature. Nature is god's art. James Bailey

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

Every good artist paints what he is. - Jackson Pollock

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

When I paint, the sea roars. The others splash about in the bath. - Salvador Dali

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

Where the spirit does not work with the hand there is no art. - Leonardo DaVinci

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

I have simply wished to assert the reasoned and independent feeling of my own individuality within a total knowledge of tradition. - Henri Matisse

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

I am unable to make any distinction between the feeling I get from life and the way I translate that feeling into painting. -  Matisse

An artist must possess Nature. He must identify himself with her rhythm, by efforts that will prepare the mastery which will later enable him to express himself in his own language. -Matisse

A young painter who cannot liberate himself from the influence of past generations is digging his own grave. - Matisse

My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece. Monet

Painting is the grandchild of nature. It is related to God. -  Rembrandt

My opinion is that the best thing would be to work on till art lovers feel drawn toward it of their own accord, instead of having to praise or to explain it. - Van Gogh

I want to touch people with my art. I want them to say 'he feels deeply, he feels tenderly.' - Van Gogh

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

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

Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in.  - Amy Lowell

Art is the unceasing effort to compete with the beauty of flowers - and never succeeding. - Gian Carlo Menotti

Every artist was first an amateur. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every human is an artist. The dream of your life is to make beautiful art. - Miguel Angel Ruiz

Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul. - W. Somerset Maugham

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

I don't think there's any artist of any value who doesn't doubt what they're doing. - Francis Ford Coppola

I've been called many names like perfectionist, difficult and obsessive. I think it takes obsession, takes searching for the details for any artist to be good. - Barbra Streisand

I've never really had a hobby, unless you count art, which the IRS once told me I had to declare as a hobby since I hadn't made money with it. - Laurie Anderson

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

In art as in love, instinct is enough. - Anatole France

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

Rules and models destroy genius and art. - William Hazlitt

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

The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web. -  Pablo Picasso

The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure. - Dale Carnegie

The principles of true art is not to portray, but to evoke. - Jerzy Kosinski

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

Things are beautiful if you love them. - Jean Anouilh

Treat a work of art like a prince. Let it speak to you first. -  Arthur Schopenhauer

True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist. - Albert Einstein

What art offers is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit.  - John Updike

When I work, and in my art, I hold hands with God. - Robert Mapplethorpe

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” - Oscar Wilde

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

I paint my own reality. The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to, and I paint whatever passes through my head without any other consideration. - Frida Kahlo

The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through. - Jackson Pollock

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

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

All art is an imitation of nature. - Seneca

I try to apply colors like words that shape poems, like notes that shape music. - Joan Miro

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

Everyone wants to understand painting. Why is there no attempt to understand the song of the birds?- Pablo Picasso

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

The painting has a life of its own. - J. Pollock

An artist is not paid for his labor bu for his vision. - James McNeill Whistler

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

Art is God´s way of letting us partake in the creative process. - Me

I was having one of those moments when we question the purpose of life and why we are here.
What´s the purpose? Why even bother to create all this? Why do we even exist? Was God lonely and in need of company?
An answer came, in the form of a thought:
"Creation is an Act of Love. 
 For no other reason than for the love of it."
Wow! I don´t know if that really came from God or my subconscious mind or from where...but the insight makes sense to me.
Why did God make all this?
For no other reason than for the love of it !!
Perhaps we should have the same attitude when we paint. - Me