Pablo Picasso Quotes

The artist does not really create; he discovers.

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

The studio is a place where I can experiment before I'm prepared for an idea to become a body of work, or a new way of working, or a way of working that can sustain me over a period of time.

Every painting I do is related to the last one: it may be a continuation of a previous painting or it may be a reaction against it.

My idea of artistry has always been 'try everything until you find out what works.'

Art does not begin with imitation, but with discipline.

Perhaps I might be satisfied, momentarily, with a work finished at one sitting, but I would soon get bored looking at it; therefore, I prefer to continue working on it so that later I may recognize it as a work of my mind.

An artist is an explorer. He has to begin by self-discovery and by observation of his own procedure. After that he must not feel under any constraint.

The idea is that what an artist lives through should broaden his notion of what it is possible for a human being to live through, and that new understanding should then get into and expand the work.

It has always been my belief that the true artist, like the true scientist, is a researcher using materials and techniques to dig into the truth and meaning of the world in which he himself lives; and what he creates, or better perhaps, brings back, are the objective results of his explorations. The measure of his talent--of his genius, if you will--is the richness he finds in such a life's voyage of discovery and the effectiveness with which he is able to embody it through his chosen medium.

An artist is like a pig snouting truffles.

When you write a novel or paint a picture, you have the opportunity to approach it and back off, tear up pages, write, rewrite, paint over, and come back to it. In film, once you start shooting, you can't restart the clock, and you keep moving forward, and you don't look back, and you don't go back. And that is, of course, antithetical to the creative process. It's really hard to generate a comfortable creative flow under that kind of pressure.

All art is a kind of exploring. To discover and reveal is the way every artist sets about his business.

I was trying. I was crawling. I was coming into myself. I was trying to in some ways get beyond - what is the word that I'm looking for? - metaphorical language in painting, and to create something that was more indexical. And what I mean by that is that when you go to the library there's an index card that refers to a book that's actual and real in the world. So that index relates to something real.

I'm a sponge, the more I absorb, the more I am able to articulate my vision, as artists do, like Picasso. I'm an artist in that light. I went from being an artist to an artiste.

I might write four lines or I might write twenty. I subtract and I add until I really hit something I want to do. You don't always whittle down, sometimes you whittle up.

At first you're doing it for yourself, it's about what sounds good to you. It's about expressing yourself. Then you get comfortable as an artist and you find yourself and people get familiar.

In reality, however, an artist is a product of art

A lot of artists are involved with fabrication. Artists today are making more objects and many of them need the participation of a dealer in order to facilitate and provide support for projects. So that has changed. But I don't know if what it means to be an artist has really changed. I hope that it hasn't.

The only damn thing I ever learned in all my years in art school was a piece is never done, it is just finished. You have to trust your inner voice, your instincts, when they tell you pencils down. And you roll up your sleeves and you start over again.

Color always vexed me because I would fight with the media I was using. I love coloring in Photoshop, and it's freed me to pursue ideas and techniques I wouldn't have otherwise attempted. Since I get to take an assignment from concept to final execution, I have more freedom in my idea-making processes.

I think, as an artist, it's very important to continue to be challenged and feel challenged all the time.

When I'm painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. It's only after a get acquainted period that I see what I've been about. I've no fears about making changes for the painting has a life of its own.

That's what's great about the arts. Everything inspires you, and you get a chance to grow from watching other people and how they do their work.

I had a teacher in art school who said something about the only works he really enjoyed seeing or found much in were works where he had a sense that a discovery was made in the course of making this object. I like to hold to that as my marching orders.