John Constable Quotes

I think a poet, like a painter, should be a craftsperson.

Would it not be better to have it understood that realism, in so far as the word means reality to life, is always bad art -- although it may possibly be very good journalism?

I used to teach on a college level, and I've taught in schools where kids just wanted to be artists, and I used to be furious with them if they didn't read, because they just seemed so - their education seemed so thin if all they could do was pick up a paint-loaded brush and fling it at a canvas. I mean, there was nothing to express there, except maybe their own personal feelings. But if they're not - if they don't have a grounding in the way these things have been expressed by other people down through the centuries, then they're lost.

I think most people agree there is a component of skill in art making; you have to learn grammar before you learn how to write.

The only thing they can't teach you at art school is art.

Of course, in the art class, I was the model.

It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academicism.

This is the merit and distinction of art: to be more real than reality, to be not nature but nature's essence.

It's amazing what you can do with an E in A-Level art, a twisted imagination and a chainsaw.

Artists aren't really people. I'm actually 40 per cent papier mache.

Painting is the most magical of mediums. The transcendence is truly amazing to me every time I go to a museum and I see how somebody figured another way to rub colored dirt on a flat surface and make space where there is no space or make you think of a life experience.

Art does not, like science, set forth a permanent order of nature, the enduring skeleton of law. Two factors primarily determine its works: one is the idea in the mind of the artist, the other is his power of expression; and both these factors are extremely variable.

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

Drawing a good picture is like telling a really good lie - the key is in the incidental detail.

You have to be creative. It's the basics. You can't be Picasso unless you know how to draw a real face; then you can turn it upside down.

I wasn't in the art world at all as a kid; I was just creative, and we were always doing arts and crafts.

I'm not much of an art guy but I really do love Shelby and Sandy's work - they look like they're made on a computer but they're hand-painted.

In a photo, you just do a click, but in art you have to put in so much energy. This concentration of energy and attention says something that other media cannot say.

There's nothing more special than intellect and labour that makes painting work. There's no magic there; it's information, and it's work.

In art, practice always comes before theory.

Imagination without skill gives us contemporary art.

Every man in creating the beautiful appearance of the dream worlds is a perfect artist.

You know what ART stands for? Above Real Truth.

An artist's flair is sometimes worth a scientist's brains.

The Academies of Art are nothing but great painting factories - those with talent are fed in at one end, and they come out as mechanical painting machines.