Robert Henri Quotes

Art is a fruit that grows in man, like a fruit on a plant, or a child in its mother's womb.

When we make a record, we don't discuss how we are planning on doing it. It's a very natural and organic growth.

I've never really cared if I was famous for my music. It was just something I had to do.

I make music not to make money but because it's in me.

Artists, like yourself, are born with a need to express that's just innate.

Art and relligion are not professions: they are not occupations for which men can be paid. The artist and the saint do what they have to do, not to make a living, but in obedience to some mysterious necessity. They do not product to live - they live to produce.

What is art? A violet. Is that all? An artistic style is a living entity, a continuous process of invention. It can never be imposed from without; born of the profoundest tendencies within a society, its direction is to a certain extent unpredictable, in much the same way as the eventual configuration of a tree's branches.

Art and writing come from somewhere down around the lizard brain. It's a much more peculiar activity than we like to think it is. The problems arise when we try to domesticate the practice, to pretend that it's a normal human activity and that "everybody's creative." They're not.

I have never expected anything from my work but the satisfaction I could get from it by the very fact of painting and saying what I couldn't say otherwise.

An artist needs not so much an audience, as to feel a need to answer, a promise to respond... a good feeling about his art.

In all great arts, as in trees, it is the height that charms us; we care nothing for the roots or trunks, yet it could not be without the aid of these.

I do what I can to convey what I experience before nature and most often, in order to succeed in conveying what I feel, I totally forget the most elementary rules of painting, if they exist that is.

If you go into acting to make money then you're an idiot. It's my hobby and the fact that I'm doing my hobby for a job is mental.

I sit for two or three hours and then in 15 minutes I can do a painting, but that's part of it. You have to get ready and decide to jump up and do it; you build yourself up psychologically, and so painting has no time for brush. Brush is boring, you give it and all of a sudden it's dry, you have to go. Before you cut the thought, you know?

I am not God. But I can only do my role here on this planet. The role I feel I was given since I was a kid was to be making art and I only wanted to give and I never let money be my God.

I have always believed that art should be a deep pleasure. I think there is a contradiction in an art of total despair, because the very fact that the art is made seems to contradict despair.

Any art that you are playing based on effort, loses something. I think that most of the time it should be something that happens, and you are inspired, and you just feel and follow your instincts. The best chiseled sculptures happen when the sculptor looks at the stone and says "I saw this sculpture in the stone, and I had to get it out." It's not contrived.

How can you go out on a limb if you do not know your own tree? No art ever came out of not risking your neck. And risk--experiment--is a considerable part of the joy of doing.

I'm letting the songs breathe and change and become what they are without force.

Who does not observe the immediate glow and security that is diffused over the life of woman, before restless or fretful, by engaging in gardening, building, or the lowest department of art? Here is something that is not routine--something that draws forth life towards the infinite.

I don't put a great deal of stock in art trophies.

A work of art is finished, from the point of view of the artist, when feeling and perception have resulted in a spiritual synthesis.

We have nothing to lose, nothing to gain, nothing we desired anymore- except to make our lives into a work of art.

Acting and making art is just something I love to do, and I love to tell stories that feel important, honest and necessary. It's not about me. It's about being part of something.

The end-purpose of all art is enjoyment!