George Balanchine Quotes

The ideas come afterwards, when the picture is finished.

My discussion with Keith Richards about the creative process led me to believe that there's an invisible presence of a stream of ever-flowing creativity that we overhear-all you have to do is pull up the antenna and dial it in. This presence allows you to maintain your sense of origin and move forward.

If I knew what the picture was going to be like I wouldn’t make it. It was almost like it was made already – the challenge is more about trying to make what you can’t think of.

Any artist is an instrument-and that's exactly why you can't do it all the time. You can only do it when it's happening, when it's coming through. No matter how much you may want to do it, if it's not happening then it's simply not happening.

Becoming an artist does not merely mean learning something, acquiring professional techniques and methods. Indeed, as someone has said, in order to write well you have to forget the grammar.

The artist discards all theories, both his own and those of others. He forgets everything when he is in front of his canvas.

You can't slot a time and a space and think 'ok now it's time to sit and compose.' It just doesn't work like that for me.

When you are doing a piece you are with it. You don't want to wait until next week, when experience will have given you something else.

I sometimes begin a drawing with no preconceived problem to solve, with only the desire to use pencil on paper... but as my eye takes in what is so produced, a point arrives where some idea crystallizes, and then a control and ordering begins to take place.

You know a trillion times more about art than me. But I’ve learned that it isn’t necessary to know all that much. You just make what you wanna see, right? It’s a game, right? It’s like being paid for dreaming.

Sometimes you feel like you have to do research to make something, other times you know you don't feel it so much.

When the work takes over, then the artist is enabled to get out of the way, not to interfere. When the work takes over, then the artist listens.

For me, the sketchbooks are more like a secret and wholly spontaneous jeu d'esprit and some of them I like as much as anything I have ever done. They are invariably without premeditation. I mean not only that I have no plan when I make them, I also have no plan to make them.

First thought is best in Art, second in other matters.

To be an artist means not to compute or count.

When I stand before a canvas, I never know what I'll do, and I am the first one surprised at what comes out.

I start a picture and I finish it. I don't think about art while I work. I try to think about life.

What a fine line there is between artistry and insanity. There's no formula for it, and I think a lot of people when they're around you - even those closest to you - when you're in that whirl of creativity and you're grabbing those things out of the air, there's no rational process.

I think good artists know when they're on a roll, and they recognize when lightning is striking. It's a very fortunate thing to have that inspiration and not to overanalyze it or mess with it; you just follow it if you love what you do.

I'm very interested to see how this new painting will go - I know I want it big and stark, and as I said, I follow the muse, and that's when it always works perfectly for me.

Artwork is not like a commercial business; there is no such thing as a schedule for art. You can't hurry art.

I never know what I'm going to put on the canvas. The canvas paints itself. I'm just the middleman.

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.

I have great difficulty sitting in the middle of the night and writing. Everything I do comes spontaneous. Sometimes it takes a long time; sometimes it comes just like that.

The songs come along at their own pace when they are ready.