Howard Pyle Quotes

Don't be carried off your feet by anything because it is modern - the latest thing. Go to the Louvre often and spend a good deal of time before the Rembrandts, the Delacroixs.

Begin by learning to draw and paint like the old masters. After that, you can do as you like; everyone will respect you.

Two of my favorite artists are Josh Smith and Joe Bradley. But I argued against them for years, until I grew to love them and felt stupid for my immediate reaction towards their work. Now, I wouldn't be happier than to simply be their friend and to talk to them about what got them making art that was years ahead of my understanding. I never went to school for art or was told what to like or when. So every day is a learning process, like most of life.

Until I began to learn to draw, I was never much interested in looking at art.

A painter may be looking at the world in a way which is very different from everyone else. If he's a craftsman, he can get other people to see the world through his eyes, and so he enlarges our vision, perception, and there's great value in that.

I absorbed as many Impressionist paintings as I could, in Parisian museums and in many museums in the United States and in books, looking for clues to architecture, clothing, settings.

We work so hard as young artists to further our careers or improve our technique, sometimes it gets so easy to not actually go and see things like a play or a film. I think the best way to get better is to see other actors do what they do well.

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.

Experience is the best teacher of all. And for that, there are no guarantees that one will become an artist. Only the journey matters.

I have always said to young artists that scholastic training and the studying of art history are crucial to fully developing as an artist.

In any of the arts, you never stop learning.

I don't look at the work of my contemporaries very much; I tend to look at pictures by dead artists. It's much easier to get near their paintings.

As a consumer, I don't create art, but I think whatever the message is, art has to touch you.

I've enjoyed collecting. I've enjoyed art ever since - I'll tell you when - I went to Columbia. I went to the Met, and I saw Poussin's 'Rape of the Sabine Women', and it's this incredible, epic, great, great painting.

I love Maira Kalman. She's an amazing illustrator and writer. I've loved her since I was in college, but when I moved to New York and experienced the same city she was drawing and writing about, I developed a whole new appreciation. Her work made me observe everything so much deeper and more joyfully.

When you do your art, and you may think people don't recognize it or appreciate it, you actually go and try to get better.

I feel that the arts have an impact in a way that just makes the world more beautiful.

Every time I make a new album, I get better and better.

I learn from teaching. Having to break things down and explain them makes me a better dancer.

I'll read a book. I'll watch a documentary or a film or whatever. I'll go to an art exhibit and just try and open myself to influence.

Growing up in a traditional environment, I was taught the importance of art, how it's connected to the soul, how it makes a human being. This made me understand and cherish American art forms.

In the study of the fine arts, they mutually assist each other.

Art is the flower of life and, as seed, it gives back life.

Nothing is as uplifting as standing before a great painting whether it was painted in 1505 or last Tuesday.

I'm often asked by younger filmmakers, 'Why do I need to look at old movies?' I've made a number of pictures in the last 20 years and the response I have to give them is that I still consider myself a student. The more pictures I've made in 20 years, the more I realize I really don't know. And I'm always looking for something or someone that I could learn from. I tell the younger filmmakers, and the young students, that do it like painters used to do—that painters do—study the old masters, enrich your palette, expand the canvas. There's always so much more to learn.