Here are 100 Art Quotes to inspire you because at PopUp Painting, we believe that everybody is creative and everyone has an inner artist just waiting to unleash itself.
Whether you are on your creative journey with painting or something non-art related, such as Gardening! These 100 art quotes are more than inspiring words from some of history’s greatest creative minds, they perfectly capture that spirit of setting yourself free of routine and embracing living life through the best mental means – having fun!
Have Courage To Embrace Creativity
- “Every child is an artist; the problem is staying an artist when you grow up.” – Pablo Picasso
- “Creativity takes courage.” – Henri Matisse
- “Every artist was first an amateur.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “If you hear a voice within you say, ‘You cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.” – Vincent Van Gogh
- “To practice any art, no matter how well or how badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. So do it.” – Kurt Vonnegut
- “Creativity is contagious, pass it on.” – Albert Einstein
- “Everybody born comes from the Creator, trailing wisps of glory. We come from the Creator with creativity. I think that each one of us is born with creativity.” – Maya Angelou
- “You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” – Maya Angelou
- “It is wise to learn; it is God-like to create.” – John Saxe
Free and Fearless Approach
- “Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” – Andy Warhol
- “We don’t make mistakes, just happy little accidents.” – Bob Ross
- “Have no fear of perfection, you’ll never reach it.” – Salvador Dali
- “You can’t wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club.” – Jack London
- “Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things.” – Ray Bradbury
- “Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.” – Scott Adams
- “Inspiration does exist, but it must find you working.” – Pablo Picasso
- “The object isn’t to make art, it’s to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.” – Robert Henri
Individual Vision & Voice
- “I found I could say things with colour and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way – things I had no words for.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
- “Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” – Edgar Degas
- “I hold that the perfection of form and beauty is contained in the sum of all men.” – Albrecht Dürer
- “Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.” – Leonardo da Vinci
- “If I could say it in words, there would be no reason to paint.” – Edward Hopper
- “The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live only as you can.” – Neil Gaiman
- “Every good painter paints what he is.” – Jackson Pollock
- “Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant; there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
- “No great artist ever sees things as they are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.” – Oscar Wilde
- “A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.” – Michelangelo
- “Learn the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist.” – Pablo Picasso
The Hidden Beauty
- “Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine, and at last, you create what you will.” – George Bernard Shaw
- “Creativity is more than just being different. Anybody can plan weird; that’s easy. What’s hard is to be as simple as Bach. Making the simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.” – Charles Mingus
- “You see things; and you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say, ‘Why not’?” – George Bernard Shaw
- “Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvellous.” – Bill Moyers
- “Nature is not only all that is visible to the eye, it also includes the inner pictures of the soul.” – Edvard Munch
- “The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.” – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “I invent nothing, I rediscover.” – Auguste Rodin
- “The chief enemy of creativity is ‘good’ sense.” – Pablo Picasso
- “Creativity is magic. Don’t examine it too closely.” – Edward Albee
Passion & Personal Expression
- “Colour is my day-long obsession, joy and torment.” – Claude Monet
- “Creativity is a drug I cannot live without.” – Cecil B. DeMille
- “Passion is one great force that unleashes creativity, because if you’re passionate about something, then you’re more willing to take risks.” – Yo-Yo Ma
- “Creativity is a natural extension of our enthusiasm.” – Earl Nightingale
- “I am seeking. I am striving. I am in it with all my heart.” – Vincent Van Gogh
- “I never paint dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality.” – Frida Kahlo
- “I paint for myself. I don’t know how to do anything else, anyway. Also, I have to earn my living, and occupy myself.” – Francis Bacon
- “I would rather die of passion than of boredom.” – Vincent Van Gogh
- “Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.” – Henry Ward Beecher
- “Colour is the place where our brain and the universe meet.” – Paul Klee
- “To be an artist is to believe in life.” – Henry Moore
- “The main thing is to be moved, to love, to hope, to tremble, to live.” – Auguste Rodin
- “It is important to express oneself…provided the feelings are real and are taken from your own experience.” – Berthe Morisot
- “I dream of painting and then I paint my dream.” – Vincent Van Gogh
- “If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, will answer you: I am here to live out loud.” – Émile Zola
Timeless Wisdom
- “Great art picks up where nature ends.” – Marc Chagall
- “The position of the artist is humble. He is essentially a channel.” – Piet Mondrian
- “In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “What moves men of genius, or rather what inspires their work, is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is still not enough.” – Eugene Delacroix
- “One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself.” – Leonardo da Vinci
- “Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.” – Vincent Van Gogh
- “The artist’s world is limitless. It can be found anywhere, far from where he lives or a few feet away. It is always on his doorstep.” – Paul Strand
- “If a man devotes himself to art, much evil is avoided that happens otherwise if one is idle.” – Albrecht Dürer
- “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.” – Pablo Picasso
- “Everything has its beauty, but not everyone sees it.” – Andy Warhol
- “Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.” – Pablo Picasso
- “Creativity comes from a conflict of ideas.” – Donatella Versace
- “They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.” – Andy Warhol
- “An artist is not paid for his labour but for his vision.” – James McNeill Whistler
- “Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” – Dr. Seuss
The Deeper Meaning of Art
- “Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” – Pablo Picasso
- “There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.” – Vincent Van Gogh
- “A work of art which isn’t based on feeling isn’t art at all.” – Paul Cézanne
- “Life is art. Art is life. I never separate it.” – Ai Weiwei
- “Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does, the better.” – Andre Gide
- “Art is the stored honey of the human soul.” – Theodore Dreiser
- “Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” – Thomas Merton
- “I think of art as the highest level of creativity. To me, it is one of the greatest sources of enjoyment.” – David Rockefeller
- “Creative work is a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.” – Steven Pressfield
- “Art is the only way to run away without leaving home.” – Twyla Tharp
- “An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one.” – Charles Horton Cooley
- “The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.” – Aristotle
- “Life beats down and crushes the soul, and art reminds you that you have one.” – Stella Adler
- “I want to touch people with my art. I want them to say, ‘he feels deeply, he feels tenderly’.” – Vincent Van Gogh
- “Art is a lie that makes us realise truth.” – Pablo Picasso
- “Art must be an expression of love or it is nothing.” – Marc Chagall
- “If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing.” – Marc Chagall
- “Painting is a means of self-enlightenment.” – John Olsen
- “Art is not a thing, it is a way.” – Elbert Hubbard
- “Art is a line around your thoughts.” – Gustav Klimt
Dedication To One’s Craft
- “Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t do it; they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while.” – Steve Jobs
- “Originality is nothing but judicious imitation.” – Voltaire
- “Painting is easy when you don’t know how, but very difficult when you do.” – Edgar Degas
- “Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master.” – Leonardo da Vinci
- “If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all.” – Michelangelo
- “Art is never finished, only abandoned.” – Leonardo Da Vinci
- “Don’t be an art critic, but paint, there lies salvation.” – Paul Cézanne
- “Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.” – Salvador Dali
- “The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.” – Francis Bacon
- “A good artist has less time than ideas.” – Martin Kippenberger
- “There is no must in art because art is free.” – Wassily Kandinsky
And that’s it! We hope you enjoyed our 100 Art Quotes To Inspire You
Feeling ready to start your creative journey – check out our Sip and Paint Events calendar right now and book yourself something fun and inspiring to do!