Ilya Ehrenburg Quotes

That's what's great about the arts. Everything inspires you, and you get a chance to grow from watching other people and how they do their work.

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.

In reality, however, an artist is a product of art

No writer, painter, or actor - no artist - is ever handed a sharp knife (although a few people are handed almighty big ones; the name we give to the artist with the big knife is 'genius'), and we hone with varying degrees of zeal and aptitude.

Only a bad artist thinks he has a good idea. A good artist does not need anything.

The importance of art is in the process of doing it, in the learning experience where the artist interacts with whatever is being made.

Different people have different ways of doing things. For me, becoming a songwriter first and falling in love with the Nashville songwriting community and the process of songs and getting better and putting more in what I wanted to say, was absolutely vital in me even wanting to be an artist.

You can’t teach art, so ART SCHOOL is a contradiction in terms.

The idea is that what an artist lives through should broaden his notion of what it is possible for a human being to live through, and that new understanding should then get into and expand the work.

As an artist, you just want to keep creating, keep finding a place that really inspires you that feels fresh and new and keep it exciting.

The grace to be a beginner is always the best prayer for an artist.

A lot of people just love music, especially a lot of aspiring artists. They just want to jump in and start making music. They don't really take time to grow and appreciate the craft.

Judging your early artistic efforts is artist abuse. . . Remember that in order to recover as an artist, you must be willing to be a bad artist. Give yourself permission to be a beginner. By being willing to be a bad artist, you have a chance to be an artist, and perhaps, over time, a very good one

Preliminary drawings or sketches in oil or pastel often have an immediacy and emotional appeal far greater than the final canvas.

Art has been good for my soul. And it's been good for my brain. I think I'm a better painter now than I was a musician growing up. You struggle to see things and translate an image through your hands to a canvas.

For hundreds of years people have talked about artists having inspiration, but often, some persons would say, write us a symphony or write us a song, on commission. The artists would come up with a masterpiece without waiting to have their muse inspire them.

My best efforts were some modern things that looked like very lousy Matisses. Thank God I had the sense to realize they were lousy, and leave Paris.

The study of beauty is a duel in which the artist cries with terror before being defeated.

The little dissatisfaction which every artist feels at the completion of a work forms the germ of a new work.

Whatever an artist's personal feelings are, as soon as an artist fills a certain area on the canvas or circumscribes it, he becomes historical. He acts from or upon other artists.

When I was a young artist, and I would go look at other artists' career retrospectives, and I was often disappointed with the lack of story line... What was missing to me was the story of where the artist came from and how they got to where they were.

There is only one true thing: instantly paint what you see. When you've got it, you've got it. When you haven't, you begin again. All the rest is humbug.

Every painting I do is related to the last one: it may be a continuation of a previous painting or it may be a reaction against it.

I just wanna be a good artist.

What matters is what happens in the soul of an artist when you're playing.