Elvis Mitchell Quotes

I never wanted to be someone who's asking someone to put my work in their gallery. I wanted to be asked.

The art industry is a totally different world, and to be appreciated in that different world is what matters to me.

When I started painting 17 years ago, I never imagined that anyone would look at my work or buy my pieces. But now I do about 14 exhibitions each year.

It's great, I guess, when your paintings are hanging up in a museum.

I've had so much success. I had something to say, I got to say it, people heard it, and they agreed. That's every artist's dream. That's the brass ring.

One of the expectations growing up was that I'd become a well-known artist.

One day I would like to have my own art show.

I think most of the people involved in any art always secretly wonder whether they are really there because they're good or there because they're lucky.

I think the problem is when people hear 'arts education,' they think, 'I don't want my son to be some painter that's going to be hanging in some museum after he dies. I don't want my daughter to be a struggling artist making no money.' People don't realize it's more than that. It's beautiful. It brings beauty to our lives.

My mother was willing to support art as a summer program for me. She never supported it as a career decision until I won the National Gallery Portrait Competition.

When I was setting out to be an artist, I said: If I can just produce one work that some people think is good, if I can become an obscure cult artist, that's all I want. Well, I attained that. I'm an obscure cult artist, and I think now, Why didn't I say I want to be another Picasso or something? What other options were open to me? But I was convinced I couldn't achieve great things because I don't have a steady-state mind.

The frame is the reward of the artist.

The 10 or 12 artists I have known really well all my life are at least as competitive as professional athletes. They may express it in slightly different terms, but you look at the Jackson Pollocks et al., and they are as interested in wall space in the galleries as Joe Montana is in the percentage of completed passes. So the notion that symphonic conducting, or stage play, or pure art, is not a competitive business is real bullshit.

Then I abandoned comics for fine art because I had some romantic vision of being like Vincent Van Gogh Jr.

My dream since I was a kid was to show in a gallery.

Somebody said us artists have trouble with success because art is derived from struggle. I disagree with that, because truely doing your art is success, whether you make money from it or not.

Sometimes when I walk into a gallery and I see someone's work, I think to myself, 'Gee, I wish I had done that.'

The big pay-off was to work as an artist and gain some shred of respect from your friends, who were also artists. But there was never any notion that you could make a living out of art. On the rare occasions you had a gallery show, and sold a little work, well, that was just gravy.

My father didn't think being an artist was a respectable or worthy goal for a man.

The chance to be both artistically appreciated and commercially appreciated... That's what you hope for.

It's great making a film and having it embraced and seen. I really enjoy that.

I set my sights upon becoming the kind of artist who would make a contribution to art history.

I do love doing action, but if I can balance the scale by doing other kinds of films that satisfy my creative ambitions, that feels really important.

I decided to become a painter when my first four paintings where all published and attracted a great deal of interest. I exhibited one of them and it was sold.

The frustrating part of it is that you're generally known for what you did last. I've had the privilege of doing some very cool independent films that, a lot of the time, the general public doesn't see unless you're at a film festival or you're into that kind of movie.