Robin G. Collingwood Quotes

No one has been able to define or synthesize that precarious, splendid, and perhaps untidy instant when the creative process begins. This is what the uniqueness of the artist is all about. The transcendent right of the artist is the right to create even though he may not always know what he is doing.

You know, artists are influenced by other artists. We're all deeply influenced by what's around us; we don't make anything cold. Sometimes we think that we do. But within that, the most important part is that even though we're influenced, what are the levels of invention that we carry forth even as we've been influenced by something that's come before?

An artist must have imagination. An artist who does not use his imagination is a mechanic.

When the artist is alive in any person, whatever his kind of work may be, he becomes an inventive, searching, daring, self-expressing creature.

Picasso had a saying - 'good artists copy, great artists steal' - and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.

Sometimes listening to music can motivate you. It can. But if you're a musician, that isn't always the way to get new ideas because you don't want to take somebody else's ideas. You need to find your own. So if you go to different artistic mediums, whether it's dance or it's visual arts or films or books, stories, sometimes it gets you hearing things, hearing progressions that you wouldn't come up with if you were just listening to other music because you don't want to copy progressions you've just heard.

Works of art make rules; rules do not make works of art.

When starting a project, your influences are the things around you. It doesn't mean you have to sound like it or look like it or anything. It's just something new, and your curiosity becomes enthralled by it.

There's nothing new, even 'new' is inspired by something. We're all, either consciously or unconsciously, we're inspired.

The real artist's work is a surprise to himself.

An artist must be very careful not to look for models. As soon as one artist takes another as model, he is lost. There is no other point of departure than reality.

An artist must find his expression closely linked to his individual experience or else follow in the old grooves resulting in lifeless forms.

A painting is above all a product of the artist's imagination, it must never be a copy. If, at a later stage, he wants to add two or three touches from nature, of course it doesn't spoil anything.

Artists aren't looking for you to write them something; they're looking for you to give them something new.

We artists can only go so far as the people can follow us. We are not alone, we are part of the system. We can take risks, but if you want to go to the peak of your consciousness, you may very well find yourself alone. Even if you know how to translate what you see, maybe only ten people will be able to understand what you tell. But, if you have faith in your vision, and retell it again and again, you will start noticing that, after a time, more people will begin to catch up with you.

Artists everywhere steal mercilessly all the time and I think this is healthy.

Originality is the only thing that counts. But the originator uses material and ideas that occur round him and pass through him. And out of his experience comes the original creation.

Necessity may be the mother of lucrative invention, but it is the death of poetical invention.

I was meticulously copying other art and then I realized I could just use a camera and put my time into an idea instead.

It is only the unimaginative who ever invents. The true artist is known by the use he makes of what he annexes.

If you're going to be an artist, real life is your inspiration.

I do sculpting sometimes when I have the time, and the first thing I sculpted was a bust of [Albert] Einstein. It still sits on my table and still inspires me. He was a person who triggered my imagination and my ideas.

The beauty of ideas is that they are like waves in the ocean and they connect with things that came before them, and I think it is very important to embrace things that interest you and influence you, and incorporate them into what you do, as all artists have always done. The ones that say they don’t, are lying. Or are afraid that their work won’t be seen as being original, somehow.

The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.

Ultimately, it comes down to taste. It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done and then try to bring those things into what you're doing. Picasso had a saying: good artists copy, great artists steal. And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas, and I think part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians and poets and artists and zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world.