Charles Mingus Quotes

I was taught to draw very well when I was in school at Boston. And I grew to enjoy drawing so much that I never stopped.

They [say] everybody's creative. Well, everybody is. But any real creativity has to rest on a basis of an acquired technique and an acquired knowledge; you can't be creative in a void, or you just get a mess.

I feel that if I had not had an art program in my school, I would have failed in a big way. My teachers knew I was intelligent, but they didn't quite know how I was ever going to apply that intelligence. The one or two teachers who knew me well knew that it would be through drawing or acting or whatever means of expression I was allowed.

Until I began to learn to draw, I was never much interested in looking at art.

My sister-in-law is a painter, and I'll say, how long did it take you to paint that painting. She'll say, It took me maybe three days, but it took me all my life to get the skills to paint that painting.

I learned how to draw from being bored in school. I would doodle on the margins of my paper.

I was brought up on art. My father thought I had a great hand at art and sent me to art school. But he did not want me to become a photographer.

The only thing they can't teach you at art school is art.

An amateur may not be an artist, though an artist should be an amateur.

You're only kidding yourself if you put creativity before craft.

I attended the High School of Industrial Arts and studied with many great artists as painting is something that you never stop learning about. Actually, in high school there was a time that I was thinking about just concentrating on painting and I asked my music teacher, Mr. Sondberg, for advice and he encouraged me to stick with the music as well. So all my life I have been singing and painting.

Art stands on the shoulders of craft, which means that to get to the art, you must master the craft.

I used to teach on a college level, and I've taught in schools where kids just wanted to be artists, and I used to be furious with them if they didn't read, because they just seemed so - their education seemed so thin if all they could do was pick up a paint-loaded brush and fling it at a canvas. I mean, there was nothing to express there, except maybe their own personal feelings. But if they're not - if they don't have a grounding in the way these things have been expressed by other people down through the centuries, then they're lost.

All artists are willing to suffer for their work. But why are so few prepared to learn to draw?

I still come closest to success with drawing.

If art is the bridge between what you see in your mind and what the world sees, then skill is how you build that bridge.

As children, we come into the world with a natural desire to both speak and draw. Society makes sure that we learn language properly, right from the beginning, but art is treated as a gift of innate genius, something we either have or don't.

I had no idea what art was. There was one art class in high school, but it didn't make a big impression on me. Then I went to college and thought I'd become a writer.

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

I've been taking art lessons since I was little, and I've always drawn. I think in pictures.

Art is something you can't teach, but you can inspire it.

People can't draw now and don't feel it's necessary. Art students don't seem to want to draw.

The whole point of art school is that you're going to be able to have nudes all day long and a teacher who is there to move you. It's great. I did a tiny bit in the one school in Paris, and it was wonderful because you'd have a nude taking a crazy position, and you'd have 10 seconds to do a drawing. Then you'd do a one-minute drawing.

Art can only be taught by artists.

I'm not a very good painter, but I'm learning a lot.