Quotes about Art

How can I create something that critics will criticize?

Emotional labor is the hard work of making art, producing generosity, and exposing creativity. Working without a map involves both vision and the willingness to do something about what you see. Emotional labor is what you get paid to do, and one of the most difficult types of emotional labor is staring into the abyss of choice and picking a path.

As Susan Kare, designer of the original Mac interface, said, "You can't really decide to paint a masterpiece. You just have to think hard, work hard, and try to make a painting that you care about. Then, if you're lucky, your work will find an audience for whom it's meaningful.

A day's work is your chance to do art, to create a gift, to do something that matters.

Becoming a linchpin is a stepwise process, a path in which you develop the attributes that make you indispensable. You can train yourself to matter. The first step is the most difficult, the step where you acknowledge that this is a skill, and like all skills, you can (and will) get better at it. Every day, if you focus on the gifts, art, and connections that characterize the linchpin, you'll become a little more indispensable.

What one does in one's art, that is the breath of one's being. What one does in one's life, that is a bagatelle for the outsiders to fuss about.

Life is a big ol' canvas. And you have every combination of colors to paint with.

There are three things, after all, that a poem must reach: the eye, the ear, and what we may call the heart or the mind. It is the most important of all to reach the heart of the reader.

The invention of the arts, and other things which serve the common use and convenience of life, is a gift of God by no means to be despised, and a faculty worthy of commendation.

The dance is the highest symbol of life itself.

Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject.

Sometimes the breaking of things is cruel, and sometimes it is necessary, and sometimes it is just an accident." "My mother was a painting in the storm, convinced down to the last fibers of canvas and the last drop of paint on the brush that the rain was an important part of the making of a masterpiece.