Richard Artschwager Quotes

Artists need to express.

I start a picture and I finish it.

I love to create, and to me, the ultimate freedom of expression is a blank canvas or a block of clay to capture whatever emotions your imagination gives it.

For me, drawing is a way of navigating the imagination, and it remains the fundamental vehicle of my practice. Drawing allows me to be at my most inventive.

Art revolves around creating something that isn't there.

Make good art.

There is something magical in seeing what you can do, what texture and tone and colour you can produce merely with a pen point and a bottle of ink.

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?

While drawing, I discover what I really want to say.

You know a trillion times more about art than me. But I’ve learned that it isn’t necessary to know all that much. You just make what you wanna see, right? It’s a game, right? It’s like being paid for dreaming.

My paintings are only the ashes of my art

For me, drawing is a question of death and life. Every day I draw, I write, I do something.

It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.

Indeed, an engineer designing a structure is not unlike an artist painting one. Both start with nothing but talent, experience, and inspiration. The fresh piece of paper on the drawing board is as blank as the newly stretched piece of canvas.

The creative act lasts but a brief moment, a lightning instant of give-and-take, just long enough for you to level the camera and to trap the fleeting prey in your little box.

A drawing is simply a line going for a walk.

Designis a revelation to me. It's like taking something that is not alive and giving it form, shape, substance, and life.

I love creating images, of course, because I'm an artist.

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

I dream of painting and then I paint my dream.

Artwork is not like a commercial business; there is no such thing as a schedule for art. You can't hurry art.

My painting does not come from the easel.

The creative act amazes me. Whether it's poetry, whether it's music, it's an amazing process, and it has something to do with bringing forth the old out into the world to create and to bring forth that which will rejuvenate.

I try and make little stories. Whether it's with a pencil or with bits of records, it's really the same thing.

Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.