Robert Henri Quotes

The only thing in life that really gives me any peace is just being lost in the process of creating something, whether it's the film or painting and drawing, which has been a big part of my life, for a long time.

Over the years I always did some water colors, and I did a series of pictures of drawings. I always did it during a period of time that was slow in the photo business, but in essence it was always frustrating because I'd get started, and then it would be time to get back to work and I wouldn't get anywhere with the painting.

Well, one always has an instinct to be a painter, and I've done quite a lot of painting at one time or another, though not with any public success.

I think a lot of times our culture has an attitude toward art and the production of art that separates artists from the rest of us, like making art or music or painting or whatever is some magical thing that you have to be inspired to do, and special people do it.

Seven days a week, I'm always drawing, doodling, or painting, whether I'm in the studio or on a plane.

Every day I paint, and every day I compose music.

I have always found writing pleasant and don't understand what people mean by 'throes of creation.'

It's easier and sociabler to talk technique than it is to make art.

The artist begins with a vision - a creative operation requiring an effort.

Creating is living doubly. The groping, anxious quest of a Proust, his meticulous collecting of flowers, of wallpapers, and of anxieties, signifies nothing else.

We have our brush and colors - paint Paradise and in we go.

To create anything — whether a short story or a magazine profile or a film or a sitcom — is to believe, if only momentarily, you are capable of magic. These essays are about that magic — which is sometimes perilous, sometimes infectious, sometimes fragile, sometimes failed, sometimes infuriating, sometimes triumphant, and sometimes tragic. I went up there. I wrote. I tried to see.

I would always be painting and drawing. If I was stuck at home, I was in the basement working on a painting.

I long so much to make beautiful things. But beautiful things require effort and disappointment and perseverance.

I love painting. I went to college in fine arts, and I still do it all the time.

I so much appreciate it when anybody tries to make something and tries to be an artist - I'm happy to see the work.

I don't care what I do - act, stand-up, write, direct - it doesn't matter as long as I'm being creative and it's good work.

My paintings have gotten to be pretty popular and I've taken a little bit more interest in painting the last few years. In fact, my novel that I wrote not too long ago, 'The Hornet's Nest,' I painted the cover picture for it and I do a good bit of painting now.

I'm not about either entertaining or instructing. The entertaining and instructing are secondary fallout from the fundamental thing, which is basically to create an aesthetic object.

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

I used to paint pictures - what happened was, I used to draw and paint pictures. And some of my friends would be, like, 'Yo, you should put that on a T-shirt,' because that's where their brain would go.

Do not think that I have stopped painting, for at any moment, I am liable to paint a good picture.

I really want to continue doing art. I would love to go back to doing paintings one day.

Maybe some people, when they sit down to write their great novel or make their great record or paint their great painting, they have it all planned out in their head. But for me, it's never worked that way.

For every artist, experience is never complete until it has been reproduced in creative work.