Art Practice Quotes

I've always been doing some sort of art. I started off, when I was very young, painting.

The business of every art is to bring something into existence, and the practice of an art involves the study of how to bring into existence something which is capable of having such an existence and has its efficient cause in the maker and not in itself.

The first essential to success in the art you practice is respect for the art itself.

My work is very bodily. It's not a shell, but a body.

Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what's inside you, to make your soul grow.

So many people think that practicing an art is a good way to make a living. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. I'm talking about singing in the shower, I'm talking about dancing to the radio, I'm talking about writing a poem to a friend.

Oh, I paint all the time.

As a total activity - I practice curating, art, architecture, writing, and publishing all together. I still act as a living creature.

People should practice an art in order to make their souls grow and not to make money or become famous. Paint a picture. Write.

How do you write? You write, man, you write, that's how, and you do it the way the old English walnut tree puts forth leaf and fruit every year by the thousands. . . . If you practice an art faithfully, it will make you wise, and most writers can use a little wising up.

I paint landscapes, figuratives. I painted all my life. In fact, I started as a commercial artist.

To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it.

What matters in art is not thinking but making.

I think I've come through the art-industrial complex - I've been educated in some of the best institutions and been privy to some of the insider conversations around theory and the evolution of art.

There are dance artists, painting artists and writing artists. Authors are writing artists. You can practice art in whatever medium you choose, and words are mine.

In the Studio Museum in Harlem, when I was dealing with that community and dealing with my peers in the streets, it allowed for me to get outside of Yale, to get outside of art-speak, and to really think about art as a material practice that has very useful and pragmatic material precedent.

Art is action. The way I live my life to its highest degree is by writing, the practice of art.

If we imagine that the only right that we have is to make commodifiable objects, then we limit our practice, and we limit the great potential for an understanding between collectors, curators and galleries.

There is no greater pleasure for me than to practice and exhibit my art.

I'm old fashioned. I really think you should know how to draw before you start painting. I use charcoal and graphite; I put a skylight in. In my house, I turned the garage into an art studio. So I'm awash in art studios.

I still do a lot of drawing on a daily basis.

I wanted my art to deal with very formal concerns and to deal with very material concerns, and to deal with antecedents and art history, which for me go very far beyond just the influence of African-American artists.

To open up the new, to look back on the old may bring forth like discoveries in the practice of art.

The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake.

Seven days a week, I'm always drawing, doodling, or painting, whether I'm in the studio or on a plane.