Colin Wilson Quotes

I think artists can go to a level of vision that can often save us from a situation which seems to have no solution whatsoever.

When a painting is finished, it's like a new born child, and the artist himself must have time for understanding. How then do you expect an amateur to understand that which the artist dos not yet comprehend.

The composer reveals the innermost nature of the world, and expresses the profoundest wisdom in a language that his reasoning faculty does not understand, just as a magnetic somnambulist gives information about things of which she has no conception when she is awake. Therefore in the composer, more than in any other artist, the man is entirely separate and distinct from the artist.

I want to emphasize the fact that we all have the same experience and the same concern, but the artist must know exactly what the experience is. He must pursue the truth relentlessly. Once he sees this fact his feet are on the path. If you want to know the truth you will know it. The manipulation of materials in an artwork is a result of this state of mind. The artist works by awareness of his own state of mind.

Cultures cherish artists because they are people who can say, Look at that.

When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something.

In the artist's recreation of the world we are enabled to see the world.

I feel like an artist often turns the camera on themselves and on their own families to understand who they are.

That's the artist's job, really: continually setting yourself free, and giving yourself new options and new ways of thinking about things.

All men are creative but few are artists.

Every true artist does feel, consciously or unconsciously, that he is touching transcendental truths; that his images are shadows of things seen through the veil. In other words, the natural mystic does know that there is something there, something behind the clouds or within the trees; but he believes that the pursuit of beauty is the way to find it; that imagination is a sort of incantation that can call it up.

The essential thing is to spring forth, to express the bolt of lightning one senses upon contact with a thing. The function of the artist is not to translate an observation but to express the shock of the object on his nature; the shock, with the original reaction.

I think I'm really drawn to filmmakers and artists who are kind of pathologically incapable of thinking straightforward about film, and about life as well, who cannot help but think laterally, think sideways about an approach to anything cinematic.

Kenneth Hari is a true artist and in my opinion a psychic. When he is painting you, he feels your heart and soul.

Two qualities essential for the artist: moralityand perspective.

I think working with artists is incredibly important for everybody in the world, but also, it is a way of seeing the world differently.

The job of the artist, is to say, wait a second, everything that we have thought is wrong. Let's re-examine it.

Behind all forms of beauty there is an infinite unity, and this unity, this intrinsic and eternal beauty, the artist is seeking to discern and to make others discern.

I think the great artists (..) have always thought with the heart.

Designers + artists see potential in things where others do not. I think artists in many ways are the original entrepreneurs.

An artist must have imagination. An artist who does not use his imagination is a mechanic.

Artists are the antennae of the race, but the bullet-headed many will never learn to trust the great artists.

do what only a true artist can do ... pounce upon the forgotten butterfly of revelation

The artist must be a philosopher. Socrates the skilled sculptor, Jean-Jacques [Rousseau] the good musician, and the immortal Poussin, tracing on the canvas the sublime lessons of philosophy, are so many proofs that an artistic genius should have no other guide except the torch of reason.