Catherine Drinker Bowen Quotes

All art involves conscious discipline. If one is going to paint, do sculpture, design a building or write a book, it will involve discipline in time and energy — or there would never be any production at all to be seen, felt or enjoyed by ourselves or others. To develop ‘Hidden Art’ will also, of course, take time and energy – and the balance of the use of time is a constant individual problem for all of us: what to do, and what to leave undone. One is always having to neglect one thing in order to give precedence to something else. The question is one of priorities

I do the same thing everyday. I go to work and paint. I try to turn out as many pictures as I can.

Art is rare and sacred and hard work, and there ought to be a wall of fire around it.

Any artist that's involved in their work is inevitably going to have a focus in what they do.

I always have said that the most valuable thing I have isn't money; it's my time.

I stay in the studio. I'm a studio junkie.

The true professional makes art when he is not feeling good, if the studio is too cold or too warm or the walls are falling down. We are painters and we paint. If I were a sculptor, I'd sculpt.

The will to work must dominate, for art is long and time is brief.

It is not from choice that my life is music and nothing more, but when one is an artist what else can he be? When a whole lifetime is too short to attain the heights he wants to reach, how then can he devote any of the little time he has to things outside of his art?

I think the mystery of art lies in this, that artists’ relationship is essentially with their work — not with power, not with profit, not with themselves, not even with their audience.

Our day-to-day lives are pretty chaotic. So in terms of the writing part, you have to get pretty disciplined about finding quiet moments and making sure you're making time for the art side, on top of all the time-consuming business side.

Time is really the only capital that any human being has, and the only thing he can't afford to lose.

I have never heard a dancer asking for advice about how to stay focused on her footwork, or a painter complaining about the dull day-to-day task of painting. What task worth doing isn't worth daily effort? Do you think Michelangelo was having fun the whole time he was on his back painting the Sistine Chapel's ceiling?

When I get to the drawing, I really enjoy taking a big chunk of time and working on the drawing and nothing else. That allows me to make sure that I'm really challenging the art, making each picture as interesting as I can.

Time, which is your enemy in almost everything in this life, is your friend in writing.

Art is not meant to be created in stolen moments only.

People who aren't artists often feel that artists are inspired. But if you work at your art you don't have time to be inspired.

my credo is very short. Its first article is art - and its second is art - and its third is art!

You will have Time, that rare and lovely gift that your Western countries have lost the more they have pursued it.

There is no such thing as taking too much time, because your soul is in that picture.

We can sell our time, but we can't buy it back.

Time is more precious than gold, more precious than diamonds, more precious than oil or any valuable treasures. It is time that we do not have enough of; it is time that causes the war within our hearts, and so we must spend it wisely.

There is nothing of which we are apt to be so lavish as of time, and about which we ought to be more solicitous; since without it we can do nothing in this world.

If we lose our Money, it gives us some Concern. If we are cheated or robb'd of it, we are angry: But Money lost may be found; what we are robb'd of may be restored: The Treasure of Time once lost, can never be recovered; yet we squander it as tho' 'twere nothing worth, or we had no Use for it.

To create a work of art, great or small, is work, hard work, and work requires discipline and order.