Christian Nestell Bovee Quotes

To confer the gift of drawing, we must create an eye that sees, a hand that obeys, a soul that feels; and in this task, the whole life must cooperate. In this sense, life itself is the only preparation for drawing. Once we have lived, the inner spark of vision does the rest.

Observe Everything. Communicate Well. Draw, Draw, Draw.

I try to paint what I have found and not what I look for. In art, intentions are of little importance.

From the first shock of the contemplation of a face depends the principal sensation which guides me throughout the entire execution of a portrait.

I have always liked drawing, when you draw you see things more intensely.

because talent alone doesn't make an artist

It is often said that Leonardo drew so well because he knew about things; it is truer to say that he knew about things because he drew so well.

Only when I experience do I compose - only when I compose do I experience.

What is art if not a concentrated and impassioned effort to make something with the little we have, the little we see?

Ideas for songs can come from something as simple as a photograph and letting my imagination run wild on an old photograph that I found, or to a film that I have seen or to just most of the time, just daily walking through life and keeping your eyes open.

At moments we are all artists.

Art is identical with a state of capacity to make, involving a true course of reasoning.

I always say that intuition is the number one tool for an artist.

Your eye is a muscle, you have to keep it in shape and the more you draw, the more you see.

When I'm drawing a bottle or a town or a market, I transport myself there. So I start drawing everything that I'm looking at while I'm there. Here's a guy selling the meat, and he will have a hook, and you start adding things, and it's a lot of fun.

Painting is an illusion, a piece of magic, so what you see is not what you see. I don't know what a painting is; who knows what sets off even the desire to paint? It might be things, thoughts, a memory, sensations, which have nothing to do directly with painting itself. They can come from anything and anywhere.

Normal people do not create art.

Mel Bochner was able to give me the tools to look at those types of experiences, register them with my own, but also hold them far enough away to see them 360.

A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others.

A GREAT PAINTER will know a great deal about how he did it, but still he will say, “How did I do it?

Drawing is of the Spirit and color of the Senses.

I don't think that writer's block exists really. I think that when you're trying to do something prematurely, it just won't come. Certain subjects just need time, as I've learned over and over again. You've got to wait before you write about them.

What is drawing? Not once in describing the shape of the mass did I shift my eyes from the model. Why? Because I wanted to be sure that nothing evaded my grasp of it... My objective is to test to what extent my hands already feel what my eyes see.

What has reason to do with the art of painting?

Fiction is based on reality unless you're a fairy-tale artist, you have to get your knowledge of life from somewhere. You have to know the material you're writing about before you alter it.