Artsy Quotes

[Gene Snyder]

Here's a few quotes from Andrew Wyeth:

"I've tried never to be easily satisfied, and I've been painting like fury now for forty years.... I have a feeling. You paint about as far as your emotions go, and that's about it."

"I think one's art goes as far and as deep as one's love goes."

"To be interested solely in technique would be a very superficial thing to me. If I have an emotion, before I die, that's deeper than any emotion that I've ever had, then I will paint a more powerful picture that will have nothing to do with just technique, but will go beyond it."

[Chris Saper]

"You have to draw at least an hour a day, just to keep from getting worse!"

(Harley, I think that's pretty close!)


Unknown:

"Good paintings go fast; bad paintings take forever."

[Steven Sweeney]

From historian David McCullough

[Michael Georges]

Steven:

What a great quote!

[Patt Legg]

Not a quote but love this from "A Secret Life" of Andrew Wyeth;

Sometimes I think I am not very artistic, because people will say "did you notice the amazing sulfur yellow in the sky..." That stuff never strikes me to paint. It's got to click with something I'm already thinking about. Then my hair rises on the back of my neck. I get goose pimples." -Richard Meryman

[Patt Legg]

...and maybe a couple more --

"If I am steamed up on the subject then I just can't think of anything else----so excited it affects my stomach.....Wyeth

and also as he sat in a bedroom gazing at the the Masonite panel-------Wyeth explained, "This time in a painting is terribly tiring, when you have nothing on the panel except a few strokes and you are filling in between the lines of what's not there.That's when I lose weight like mad, because I am seeing something that does not yet exist."

Andrew Wyeth--A Secret Life by Richard Meryman

[Elizabeth Schott]

I don't know much about art, but I know what I like!

Kitty Osler Gould Williams, my mother, and most mothers cornered during a studio critique.

[Jimmie Arroyo]

I'm pretty sure it was Michaelangelo that said,

"Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I can accomplish."

I guess that would fit anyone who feels like their worst critic.

[Jim Riley]

Steven,

Re: The John Adams quote: "I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study paintings, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain".

I don't understand Mr. Adams' quote. It sounds a bit like a trickle down of significant and worthy interests or studies. Perhaps the interests of the grandchildren should be the prerequisite for those that are caught up in the importance of politics and war. It might make leaders less arrogant.

It sounds as though he considers painting, poetry, etc., as one step above gardening, games, and mere play.

[Michele Rushworth]

My interpretation of the Adams quote is just the opposite. I felt he meant that the arts were the highest calling, kind of like the self-actualization at the top of Maslow's heirarchy.