Margaret Walker Quotes

I can concentrate on my art.

I have my own studio. I'm in it all the time.

To be able to create you have to have peace of mind on some level.

A lot of artists need structure.

I love to be alone, I find it necessary, but I don't know if that's just how I am or if it's an essential ingredient to making, to art. Certainly on a practical level it is. But on the other hand, I think it's a myth that the creative inspiration is locked up inside the person and just needs a quiet space and the right "serious" brooding moment to get released.

I was meticulously copying other art and then I realized I could just use a camera and put my time into an idea instead.

The only thing one can give an artist is leisure in which to work. To give an artist leisure is actually to take part in his creation.

To be creative you must create a space for yourself where you can be undisturbed... separate from everyday concerns.

The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid; the state of being alone.

I don't think about art when I'm working. I try to think about life.

Artwork is not like a commercial business; there is no such thing as a schedule for art. You can't hurry art.

Composing demands a degree of isolation.

A lot of artists think they want anger. But a real, strong, bitter anger occupies the mind, leaving no room for creativity.

I sketch literally all the time; constructing a collection is like building a family - you have to have a certain balance. I isolate myself - I need to be concentrated for this so I leave Paris, I leave to a place without a phone.

It's an amazing feeling to go into a studio and really be alone.

Now to consult the rules of composition before making a picture is a little like consulting the law of gravitation before going for a walk. Such rules and laws are deduced from the accomplished fact; they are the products of reflection.

You can't be at your full creative power if you are sedated.

So the only environment the artist needs is whatever peace, whatever solitude, and whatever pleasure he can get at not too high a cost. All the wrong environment will do is run his blood pressure up; he will spend more time being frustrated or outraged. My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whiskey.

I have disciplined myself when I'm working. When I discovered art, I realized that one could keep that search going within creation. But I also realize that in order to create the art, you have to stay, you can't go too far.

The time is a thing; you don't have so much time. A good trick is to try and think about a way to use material from one occupation for the other. It's like going through working a day job, this is so dumb to say, but you know how Julian Schnabel made those crockery paintings while he was working as a short-order cook? It's like that, using what is around, transforming that to create meaning and make art. Trying to take nothing and make... something.

That's the most important thing in art: to be aware, pay attention, be inspired - but it should come ultimately from you.

The mind of an artist, in order to achieve the prodigious effort of freeing whole and entire the work that is in him, must be incandescent...there must be no obstacle in it, no foreign matter unconsumed.

A life lived in chaos is an impossibility for the artist. No matter how unstructured may seem the painter's garret in Paris or the poet's pad in Greenwich Village, the artist must have some kind of order or he will proudce a very small body of work. To create a work of art, great or small, is work, hard work, and work requires discipline and order.

If I am to write, I must have a room to myself, which shall be my room.

You can't make either life or art, you have to work in the hole in between, which is undefined. That's what makes the adventure of painting.