Robert Henri Quotes

I drew as a child, they tell me. I can vaguely remember doing it. And then I drew again in the late years at high school.

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

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

I'm still trying to discover my position on my own artwork and hopefully at this exhibition someone will come and tell me. I'm open to listening to criticism.

Well, I didn't know how to draw very well back then, in the '40s and '50s.

I'm not so sure I 'like' to watch myself on film, but I do find it necessary in order to continually be a better artist.

I was taught to draw very well when I was in school at Boston. And I grew to enjoy drawing so much that I never stopped.

I believe that I improve with every book I write - most writers will probably tell you the same thing. I'm still learning my craft and will be until the day I drop dead at my computer. In my opinion, art isn't something that can be perfected. There's always room for improvement.

The first year at Juilliard is, I think, the best. And partly why I left - I only went one year. Partly why I felt okay leaving is that the most important elements, I believe, happen in the first year. What they do is they tear down all your conceptions of acting, and they take away all your tricks that you've learned.

I enjoy going to shows to study other artists. It is important to always remain a student to my craft.

While it's a fact that a voice begins with natural talent, any talent must be nurtured, cajoled, wrestled with pampered, challenged, and, at every turn, examined.

In committing to artistic growth, you have to refine your skills to support your instincts.

I don't spend that much time in the studio. When I first started doing music, I was in the studio every day just trying to build my portfolio. But now, even though I haven't totally mastered my craft, I'm at a pretty high level.

I am just beginning to understand what it is to paint. A painter should have two lives, one in which to learn, and one in which to practice his art.

I'm constantly learning as a songwriter, so naturally that makes you grow as an artist. But I also think the more time I spend in music the more time I feel I understand it; or at least I understand where I stand amongst the industry and my identity within it all.

Most children are given far too much praise for their early drawings, so much so that they rarely learn the ability to refine their first crude efforts the way their early attempts at language are corrected.

All of you here have one hundred thousand bad drawings in you. The sooner you get rid of them, the better it will be for everyone.

I've been writing as long as I've been able to form words. I never wrote with an idea of publishing anything until I began working on '[To Kill a] Mockingbird'. I think that what went before may have been a rather subconscious form of learning how to write, of training myself.

I think any good artist - and I'm not saying that I am one - takes notes and should first emulate their heroes and then try to move beyond them.

I can look at my early work and see what a pained struggle it was to draw what I was drawing. I was trying so hard to get this specific look that was in my head, and always falling short.

Failure would only be if you had somewhere stopped growing. As far as I can see the whole duty of the artist is to keep on growing.

I think the musical evolution I've gone through has come from all the work with the material.

Over and over again did the Attorney-General cry out aloud, in the agony of his cause, 'What is to become of painting if the critics withhold their lash?

All artists are willing to suffer for their work. But why are so few prepared to learn to draw?

I started with straight, basic, symbolic structures. My problem now is the opposite; as I get older, I try to make my paintings more contrapuntal, richer.