Honore de Balzac Quotes

Sometimes my art is just an illusion - or is it?

Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it 'the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.' The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of 'Artist.'

One must always draw, draw with the eyes, when one cannot draw with a pencil.

Art is the microscope of the mind, which sharpens the wit as the other does the sight; and converts every object into a little universe in itself. Art may be said to draw aside the veil from nature. To those who are perfectly unskilled in the practice, unimbued with the principles of art, most objects present only a confused mass.

A painter may be looking at the world in a way which is very different from everyone else. If he's a craftsman, he can get other people to see the world through his eyes, and so he enlarges our vision, perception, and there's great value in that.

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.

Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.

Would that we could at once paint with the eyes! In the long way from the eye through the arm to the pencil, how much is lost!

I make pictures and someone comes in and calls it art.

I don't paint things. I only paint the difference between things.

For 'Picture This,' I wanted it to be a drawing book that didn't have any instructions about drawing, beyond the real simple stuff you'd find like in a Bazooka bubblegum wrapper, or in 'Highlights' magazine. I just wanted it to be feelings about looking and seeing and pictures.

To put down an ideogram of a table so that people will recognize it as a table is not the work of a painter, but to sense it for a moment as a magic carpet with a leg hanging down at each corner is the beginning of a painter's imagination.

The mind of the painter must resemble a mirror, which always takes the colour of the object it reflects and is completely occupied by the images of as many objects as are in front of it.

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

Style is objective, akin to art, so it varies.

I think there's art, and then there's illustration. Art comes from a deeper place.

Yes, I'm very expressive with my painting.

You know what ART stands for? Above Real Truth.

The artist does not draw what he sees, but what he has to make others see.

Art flies around truth, but with the definite intention of not getting burnt. Its capacity lies in finding in the dark void a place where the beam of light can be intensely caught, without this having been perceptible before.

(Art is) the residue of vision.

Drawing is giving a performance; an artist is an actor who is not limited by the body, only by his ability and, perhaps, experience.

Insight is the first condition of Art.

I realize that every picture isn't a work of art.

My first love is art, and I see a lot of things in an artistic way.