What is a sketch but a moment’s
passion, searching for the truth.
Stephen Aitken, American artist
If painting is no longer needed, it seems a
pity that some of us are born into the world
with such a passion for line and color.
Mary Cassatt, American painter
The passion … is transmuted during the
act of painting from rage to euphoria.
Jane Champagne, Canadian painter
Passion, though a bad regulator,
is a powerful spring.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, American writer
Through some memory, feeling, experience,
the passion wells up and spills into my
palette; it mixes with my paint. And the paint
tells me what to do. I listen. I act on it.
Ann Dettmer, American painter
Whether you are painting or singing or acting
or dancing, do it with passion, do it every day,
and do it like you don’t need the money.
John Ferrie, Canadian artist
The creation of art is the passion. The completion
of art only ignites another creation.
Jeffrey Breslow, American sculptor
Sometimes there are rare golden moments, moments of bliss and dreamlike poetry … That’s what gives me my passion and the fuel I need to continue moving paint across a fresh, waiting canvas.
Eric Frantz, American artist
Art is a passion or it is nothing.
Roger Fry, English artist and critic
Expression is not a matter of passion
mirrored on the human face or revealed
by a violent gesture. When I paint a
picture, its every detail is expressive.
Henri Matisse, French artist
It’s a curse. Yes, it’s a flame. It owns you. It has
possession over you. You are not the master
of yourself. You are consumed by this thing.
Henry Miller, American playwright
Technique alone is never enough. You
have to have passion. Technique alone
is just an embroidered potholder.
Raymond Chandler, American writer
Painting, like passion, is a living voice.
Barnett Newman, American artist
George Bernard Shaw, Irish playwright
No amount of skillful invention can replace
the essential element of imagination.
Edward Hopper, American painter
Art is everywhere, except it has to
pass through a creative mind.
Louise Nevelson, American sculptor
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.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, French painter
If you can’t find your inspiration by
walking around the block one time, go
around two blocks—but never three.
Robert Motherwell, American painter
What I dream of is an art of equilibrium,
purity, and tranquility, devoid of upsetting
or troubling subject matter …
Henri Matisse, French artist
Art must be an expression of love or it is nothing.
Marc Chagall, Russian-French artist
The source of genius is imagination alone,
the refinement of the senses that sees what
others do not see, or sees them differently.
Eugène Delacroix, French artist
A work of art which did not begin
in emotion is not art.
Paul Cézanne, French artist
I shut my eyes in order to see.
Paul Gauguin, French artist
Painting from nature is not copying the
object; it is realizing one’s sensations.
Paul Cézanne, French artist
In art the hand can never execute anything
higher than the heart can inspire.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, American writer
I put my heart and my soul into my work,
and have lost my mind in the process.
Vincent van Gogh, Dutch painter
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, American painter
It takes a very long time to become young.
Pablo Picasso, Spanish artist
And those who were seen dancing were thought to
be insane by those who could not hear the music.
Friedrich Nietzsche, German writer and philosopher
An empty canvas is a living wonder …
far lovelier than certain pictures.
Wassily Kandinsky, Russian painter
Everyone wants to understand
painting. Why is there no attempt to
understand the song of the birds?
Pablo Picasso, Spanish artist
Inspiration exists, but it has to find us working.
Pablo Picasso, Spanish artist
Arrange what pieces come your way.
Virginia Woolf, English writer
The real voyage of discovery consists not in
seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
Marcel Proust, French writer
You can’t depend on your eyes when
your imagination is out of focus.
Mark Twain, American writer
Where the spirit does not work with
the hand, there is no art.
Leonardo da Vinci, Italian artist
All art is but imitation of nature.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca, ancient Roman dramatist
Those who do not want to imitate
anything, produce nothing.
Salvador Dalí, Spanish painter
Art happens all the time, everywhere. All
we have to do is to keep our minds open.
Jacek Tylicki, Polish-American artist
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, French artist
They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn’t. I
never painted dreams. I painted my reality.
Frida Kahlo, Mexican painter
What I give form to in daylight is only one
percent of what I have seen in darkness.
M. C. Escher, Dutch artist
A subject that is beautiful in itself gives no
suggestion to the artist. It lacks imperfection.
Oscar Wilde, Irish writer
Without passion man is a mere latent force and
possibility, like the flint which awaits the shock
of the iron before it can give forth its spark.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel, Swiss poet
Alvaro Castagnet, Spanish painter
Passion makes a person stop eating, sleeping, working, feeling at peace. A lot of people are frightened because, when it appears, it demolishes all the old things it finds in its path.
Paulo Coelho, Brazilian writer
When I’m ready to make a photograph … I quite obviously see in my mind’s eye something that is not literally there … I’m interested in something which is built up from within, rather than just extracted from without.
Ansel Adams, American photographer
Absent imagination and artistic vision, we
are blind to the wonders of creation.
David Allio, American photographer
Imagination is the highest kite one can fly.
Lauren Bacall, American actress
Don’t play what’s there; play what’s not there.
Miles Davis, American musician
Artists are supposed to be the ones with
imagination. A good part of our job description
is to get regular people to use theirs.
Robert Genn, Canadian painter
Do not quench your inspiration and
your imagination; do not become
the slave of your model.
Vincent van Gogh, Dutch painter
Imagination abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters; united with it, she is the mother of the arts and the source of their wonders.
Francisco de Goya, Spanish painter
Harness the imagination,
for she is the whole of happiness.
Baltasar Gracián, Spanish writer
An artist who has no imagination is a mechanic.
Robert Henri, American 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, French painter
I saw the angel in the marble and
carved until I set him free.
Michelangelo, Italian artist
Imagination is the true magic carpet.
Norman Vincent Peale, American writer
Those who dream by day are cognizant
of many things which escape those
who dream only by night.
Edgar Allan Poe, American writer
This world of the imagination is fancy-free
and violently opposed to common sense.
Mark Rothko, Russian-American painter
Pablo Picasso, Spanish artist
The world of reality has its limits; the
world of imagination is boundless.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Swiss writer
A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the
moment a single man contemplates it, bearing
within him the image of a cathedral.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, French writer
One supreme fact which I have discovered
is that it is not willpower, but fantasy-
imagination that creates. Imagination is the
creative force. Imagination creates reality.
Richard Wagner, German composer
If there is truth in art, it is the artist’s
own truth. If beauty is involved, it is
only the metaphor of imagination.
David Smith, American sculptor
The world is but a canvas to the imagination.
Henry David Thoreau, American writer
In my mind I have finer pictures than ever
before. Ten thousand pictures come and go
every day, and those are the only complete
pictures painted, pictures that shall never
be polluted by paint and canvas.
John H. Twachtman, American painter
You cannot hear the waterfall if you stand
next to it. I paint my jungles in the desert.
Macedonio de la Torre, Peruvian painter
The idea or the faculty of imagination serves as
both rudder and bridle to the senses, inasmuch
as the thing imagined moves the sense.
Leonardo da Vinci, Italian artist
There are moments when a man’s imagination,
so easily subdued to what it lives in,
suddenly rises above its daily level and
surveys the long windings of destiny.
Edith Wharton, American writer
I’m not inspired every day I go to the studio, but you’ve got to push yourself. Do it every day and once in a while things will really click. That’s the biggest high you can imagine.
Jamie Wyeth, American artist
I am convinced that there are universal
currents of Divine Thought vibrating the
ether everywhere and that any who can
feel these vibrations is inspired …
Richard Wagner, German composer
Inspiration demands the active cooperation of the intellect joined with enthusiasm, and it is under such conditions that marvelous conceptions, with all that is excellent and divine, come into being.
Giorgio Vasari, Italian artist
Our moments of inspiration are not lost, though we have no particular poem to show for them; for those experiences have left an indelible impression, and we are ever and anon reminded of them.
Henry David Thoreau, American writer
You can’t cross the sea merely by
standing and staring at the water.
Rabindranath Tagore, Bengali artist
What distinguishes a great artist from a weak one is first their sensibility and tenderness; second, their imagination; and third, their industry.
John Ruskin, English art critic
Never leave a painting mediocre; it’s
better to take a chance with it.
Guy Corriero, American painter
Do not worry about your originality. You
could not get rid of it even if you wanted to.
Robert Henri, American painter
The main thing is to be moved, to
love, to hope, to tremble, to live.
Auguste Rodin, French sculptor