The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance. -- Aristotle (384-322 BC)

“Art in its highest form is art that serves and instructs society and human development.”
-- Harry Belafonte

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures. -- Henry Ward Beecher

 

True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist. --Albert Einstein

In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson Pictures must not be too picturesque. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson "Every artist was first an amateur." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

“The most valiant thing you can do as an artist is inspire someone else to be creative.”

- Joseph Gordon-Levitt

“Throughout my life and career, giving back has been a constant and a joy for me... We have the potential to do wonderful things in the world."
-- Josh Groban (Founder, Find Your Light Foundation)

 

Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes

The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person. -- Abraham Lincoln

* “We need artists to help us come together and share our voices and build community around powerful issues concerning our roles in the world and our planet’s survival. Compassion must be translated into action.” -- Natasha Mayers

Trying to force creativity is never good. ~ Sarah McLachlan

Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time. -- Thomas Merton

The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls. -- Pablo Picasso Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun. -- Pablo Picasso The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web. -- Pablo Picasso

The beginning is the most important part of the work.
-- Plato

All art speaks in signs and symbols. No one can explain how it happens that the artist can waken to life in us the existence that he has seen and lives through. No artistic speech is the adequate expression of what it represents; its vital force comes from what is unspoken in it. -- Albert Schweitzer

Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable. -- George Bernard Shaw

I've been called many names like perfectionist, difficult and obsessive. I think it takes obsession, takes searching for the details for any artist to be good. -- Barbra Streisand

This world is but a canvas to our imagination. -- Henry David Thoreau

To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can't eat it. -- Leo Tolstoy

The artist…is the voice of the people. -- Alice Walker

The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity. ~ Walt Whitman

Art for art's sake is a philosophy of the well-fed. -- Frank Lloyd Wright