Cyril Connolly Quotes

My process of working is that I don't create a picture, I find it.

For the artist, drawing is discovery. And that is not just a slick phrase; it is quite literally true.

I play music, I paint - these things come from your depths.

I'd begun to collect things that were lying in piles on the floor of my studio. I had run out of space, and I started to build shelves. I turned around one day and realized that that was the vehicle for carrying so many of the things that I was looking at and talking about, so they went from the walls to the works.

Art is an investigation.

The waking mind is the least serviceable in the arts.

The calling of art is to extract us from our daily reality, to bring us to a hidden truth that's difficult to access - to a level that's not material but spiritual.

Sometimes I feel as if sections of my ballets were done for me - that I didn't do them myself.

Dreams say what they mean, but they don't say it in daytime language.

Like all artists, I go through creative spurts.

The important thing for me as an artist is to keep going back to the page and doing what I do.

What I love about the creative process, and this may sound naive, but it is this idea that one day there is no idea, and no solution, but the next day there is an idea. I find that incredibly exciting and conceptually actually remarkable.

When I finish a painting, it usually looks as surprising to me as to anyone else.

An artist's duty is rather to stay open-minded and in a state where he can receive information and inspiration. You always have to be ready for that little artistic Epiphany.

I'm inspired by artists and musicians. There are so many wonderful and talented people in the world. I love discovering new music, new writers, or new art.

Mournful and yet grand is the destiny of the artist.

In my experience a painting is not made with colors and paint at all. I don't know what a painting is; who knows what sets off even the desire to paint?

My creative process is quite slow. I hear melodies in my head while I'm washing the dishes and I allow my subconscious to do the work.

Art is never finished, only abandoned.

Every artiste has a process.

I feel like, a lot of times, you make music, and you don't really understand why until with hindsight.

The words that I'm most happy with are the ones that come from my subconscious rather than my conscious. They just feel right. I think that's the same with music, really. If you're doing an album, there's ten or eleven sets of lyrics, so you get to the point of inspiration ten or eleven times - it's difficult.

What I'm trying to do is to get a glimpse into the secret state that surrounds us all the time but that we have not trained ourselves to see very well.

No traveller ever sets out with so little idea of where he is going or how he is going to get there than an artist does. And no traveller ever gets to a more wonderful place.

I am an artist. For me, a picture is like poetry. When you make art, this is not coming from an intellectual place. It's coming from the deep side of your unconscious, your soul. And you are like in some kind of possession, where you are doing anything to get the visual. You become another person. You're becoming an artist in action. And then a lot of miracles come. A lot of discovering. It's a very complicated thing.