Charles Saatchi Quotes

I don't paint to live, I live to paint.

When I got into art school, I thought it was paradise. I wanted to be an artist so much that I was really driven and nothing could stop me.

If you are born an artist, you have no choice but to fight to stay an artist.

You just have to work really hard and throw everything into it. ... It's really hard to be an artist, and even if you do work really hard, there's no guarantee about anything. There's no advice you can give someone that things will somehow work out, but you can talk to people about how they can make art a big part of their life.

Artists usually don't make all that much money, and they often keep their artistic hobby despite the money rather than due to it.

I'm not looking to be an artist to make money. I'm looking to be an artist.

But where there is no art show, I would still be painting.

Why an artist loves what they do is often so hard to describe.

At art college, I started to do music and then painting and drawing - and that would have been my ideal life, to be an artist and be paid for it, to be able to create stuff. I realized it was difficult, but I don't know if I had the application for it.

When it comes to art, you just need to be focused on doing a great thing. Not thinking all about the business.

Only be an artist if you have no choice!

I'm fully aware had I stayed with my art, I would be well known, respected and most likely rich.

For the serious artist does not satisfy needs

I'm sorry that our country and the people do not consider the arts as vital to our well-being as, say, medicine. Suffering is unnecessary. It doesn't make you a better artist; it only makes you a hungry one. However, to me the acquisition of the craft of writing was worth any amount of suffering.

I'm a fine artist working in a commercial arena, so that's my cross to bear

My primary thing is to make a painting, not necessarily to make a painting to sell for gazillions of dollars, but just to make a painting.

Some people have been kind enough to call me a fine artist. I've always called myself an illustrator. I'm not sure what the difference is. All I know is that whatever type of work I do, I try to give it my very best. Art has been my life.

I am, as they say, the classic starving artist.

We work in the dark - we do what we can - we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.

That's the motivation of an artist - to seek attention of some kind.

If it is the mark of the artist to love art before everything, to renounce everything for its sake, to think all the sweet human things of life well lost if only he may attain something, do some good, great work - then I was never an artist.

This image of wanting to be an artist - that I would in some way become an artist -was very strong. I knew for a long, long time that that's what I would be. But nothing I ever did seemed to bring me any nearer to the condition of being an artist. And I didn't know how to do it.

Why do writers, say, give up a job in economics and decide to write poetry? Or, why do they give up a job in a bank and decide to paint, like Krishan Khanna? They want to convey something.

Only 10 percent of people who go to art school will still be making art in 10 years. To some extent, you have to want to do it. It's hard. It is something you really have to stick with for it to work.

I don't believe that artists really are interested in money. That's not the motivation for art.