Eleanor Catton Quotes

I start a picture and I finish it.

I'd rather get back to making art than talk about it.

I'm not a designer, I'm a creator.

I don't like watching people work if they're making art.

Making art is different for everyone.

Conception, my boy, fundamental brain work, is what makes all the difference in art.

I love producing! It's so much fun to start with a blank canvas and create the picture you want to create and see it all come together.

So much of art-making is about reducing things to the essentials, so I don't feel particularly crippled by this. I don't want it to look natural because then I would be making a documentary film.

What I do is create images, period.

I've always developed all my own pieces, and they're time-consumers.

All the important drawings I do myself. Every single character is also done by me.

Books and movies are never finished, only surrendered.

Artists today think of everything they do as a work of art. It is important to forget about what you are doing - then a work of art may happen.

To me, being in the studio is one of the most exciting parts about being an artist.

I suppose I consider my work a kind of picture making.

The ideas come afterwards, when the picture is finished.

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.

Out of my entire annual output of songs, perhaps two, or at the most three, came as a result of inspiration. We can never rely on inspiration. When we most want it, it does not come.

Art is the path of the creator to his work.

I personally just love movies about the creative process.

I always conceive a piece as a different set of challenges.

When I get in the studio the idea is just to work and bang out as many as I can.

I think making a movie is like drawing or creating an art piece. The artwork reflects part of your personality, but not all.

The artist is the medium between his fantasies and the rest of the world.

These rough sketches, which are born in an instant in the heat of inspiration, express the idea of their author in a few strokes, while on the other hand too much effort and diligence sometimes saps the vitality and powers of those who never know when to leave off.