John Constable Quotes

I looked at Rembrandt and Superman, Matisse and Bugs Bunny, and began to make my own pictures.

To be an artist, you need to play inside your work.

I do real paintings, you know. I'm a little messy in the studio, so I'm a bit of a danger. But I just adore it.

I can obviously relate to a character who is an artist, because the creative process is a big part of my life.

I don't believe in art. I believe in artists.

I'm not an Abstraction Expressionist, but I think dedication to paintings comes from an early interest in that work.

When it comes to art, you just need to be focused on doing a great thing. Not thinking all about the business.

... a canvas that I have covered is worth more than a blank canvas. My pretensions go no further; that is my right to paint, my reason for painting.

I have been sent more ridiculous press notices. People are frequently comparing my work with Van Gogh... I do hope I do not get bloated and self-satisfied. When proud feelings come I step up over them to the realm of work, to the thing I want, the liveness of the thing itself.

At 10 o'clock in the morning I'd go right in the studio. It feels good to be there in the morning before the day starts to mess with you - I don't mean in a negative way, but before I'd speak to a lot of people or get into anything, I'd go in there and just see what I felt. A lot happens in the morning for me in the studio.

To end up with a canvas that is no less beautiful than the empty canvas is to begin with.

I'm a painter first, and a musician second.

This morning I got up early and I was glazing the paintings and they just looked so beautiful. I had a private moment of "yeah, I'm behind this." Which is all that matters as an artist, to believe in what you're doing. It sounds like an obvious thing but it takes a lot of work.

You get caught up in a cycle at some point, so I broke the cycle and decided; I'm going to really write a lot of books, because I need to get in touch with that part of myself in order to make more music.

I think all you can really do is use the tour to kinda fill up with experiences and thoughts, and then, when you get back to the studio, or in some type of creative environment, that's when you release everything that you've encountered on tour.

Sometimes I find myself at three o'clock in the morning painting something and throwing things around and seeing what works. I'd like to properly study fine art. I think it would be quite an interesting endeavor.

The character of the artist doesn't enter into the nature of the art. Eliot said that art is the escape from personality, which I think is right. We know that Velázquez embezzled money from the Spanish court and wanted power and so on, but you can't see this in his art.

I have never painted a recent picture.

Art is the path of the creator to his work.

I am going to do some drawings or paintings...in the mirror of my wardrobe..with myself as a figure doing something.

Just slap something on it when you see a blank canvas staring at you with a sort of imbecility.

If you're going to be an artist, all life is your subject. And all your experience is part of your art. A youngster told me recently that he was going to give himself a year to see if he has talent. A year! It takes a lifetime to see if you have it. Painting is total engagement.

There is at the back of every artist’s mind something like a pattern and a type of architecture. The original quality in any man of imagination is imagery. It is a thing like the landscape of his dreams; the sort of world he would like to make or in which he would like to wander, the strange flora and fauna, his own secret planet, the sort of thing he likes to think about. This general atmosphere, and pattern or a structure of growth, governs all his creations, however varied.

If I was an artist, and I was in the studio, then whatever I was doing in the studio must be art.

Then you learn about composition, you learn about old masters, you form certain ideas about structure. But the inhuman activity of trying to make some kind of jump or leap, where , the painting is always saying, 'What do you want from me? I can only be a painting.' You have to go from part to part, but you shouldn't see yourself go from part to part, that's the whole point.