Bob Ross Quotes

To make art you need to be inspired.

Art is something you can't teach, but you can inspire it.

If Monsieur X spent an eternity studying treatises on optics, he would never paint 'La Grande Jatte.'

Things shape themselves before my eyes just as a I draw them.

Do not copy nature. Art is an abstraction. Rather, bring your art forth by dreaming in front of her and think more of creation.

The richest source of creation is feeling, followed by a vision of its meaning.

At moments we are all artists.

Art is a little bit larger than life - it's an exhalation of life and I think you probably need a little touch of madness.

Normal people do not create art.

I'm a sponge, the more I absorb, the more I am able to articulate my vision, as artists do, like Picasso. I'm an artist in that light. I went from being an artist to an artiste.

Art arises when the secret vision of the artist and the manifestation of nature agree to find new shapes.

I'm very interested to see how this new painting will go - I know I want it big and stark, and as I said, I follow the muse, and that's when it always works perfectly for me.

To me, writing and composing are much more like painting, about colors and brushes; I don't use a computer when I write, and I don't use a piano. I'm at a desk writing, and it's very broad strokes and notes as colors on a palette.

Sometimes I can see the whole painting from the outset in my mind's eye. But more often than not, that idea doesn't last the duration of the painting. Sometimes it comes out easy, just as I had envisaged. But that is reasonably rare.

I wasn't exposed to art as I was growing up, and can't recall the first time I saw a work of art. However, I remember very clearly a vision I had of a little green reindeer when I was a child, and visions emanate from the same mythical area where painting resides. Whatever the reason, I immediately felt comfortable working with visual materials.

I have admired David Bromley's work for years. He possesses such a wild and vivid imagination and really sees the beauty in everything.

Sometimes I see it and then paint it. Other times I paint it and then see it. Both are impure situations, and I prefer neither.

Making art, good art, is always a struggle. It can make you happy when you pull it off. There's no better feeling. It's beauteous. But it's always about hard work and inspiration and sweat and good ideas.

If you're a creative person, what inspires you is always changing; it's always shifting.

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

If you are a creative person, you try to create things that are an extension of yourself.

With the brush we merely tint, while the imagination alone produces colour.

At fifty, that is in 1880, I formulated the idea of unity, without being able to render it. At sixty, I am beginning to see the possibility of rendering it.

To write a novel is to embark on a quest that is very romantic. People have visions, and the next step is to execute them. That's a very romantic project. Like Edvard Munch's strange dreamlike canvases where people are stylized, like 'The Scream.' Munch must have had that vision in a dream, he never saw it.

Being creative is my idea of heaven. I'm just incredibly fortunate that I can do it in artwork. Watercolor is what I started out with. What I love about watercolor is that a lot of happy accidents occur.