fbpx
Want creative kids? Check out this list of 100 quotes on art and creativity to inspire your young artist!

Do you have an aspiring artist who needs a bit of inspiration now and then in his or her creating? Why not let them hear from the great masters (as well as the lesser-known creatives)? I’ve compiled a list of 100 quotes on art and creativity to encourage or motivate them when the struggle gets real.

In fact, it would be a great idea for them to find one or more quotes that truly speak to them and then create their own work of art using those words:

  1. “Every child is an artist; the problem is staying an artist when you grow up” – Pablo Picasso
  2. “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
  3. “Creativity takes courage.” – Henri Matisse
  4. “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
  5. “Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.” – Andre Gide
  6. “We don’t make mistakes, just happy little accidents.” – Bob Ross
  7. “Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.” – Leonardo da Vinci
  8. “Every artist was first an amateur.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
  9. “There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.” – Vincent van Gogh
  10. “Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” – Pablo Picasso
  11. “Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment.” – Claude Monet
  12. “I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way – things I had no words for.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
  13. “I hold that the perfection of form and beauty is contained in the sum of all men.” – Albrecht Dürer
  14. “Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” – Edgar Degas
  15. “In art, what we want is the certainty that one spark of original genius shall not be extinguished.” – Mary Cassatt
  16. “A work of art which isn’t based on feeling isn’t art at all.” – Paul Cézanne
  17. “Life is art. Art is life. I never separate it.” – Ai Weiwei
  18. “Creativity is contagious, pass it on.” – Albert Einstein
  19. “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
  20. “Have no fear of perfection, you’ll never reach it.” – Salvador Dali
  21. “You can’t wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club.” – Jack London
  22. “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
  23. “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
  24. “Originality is nothing but judicious imitation.” – Voltaire
  25. “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
  26. “Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while.” – Steve Jobs
  27. “Creativity is a drug I cannot live without.” – Cecil B. DeMille
  28. “You see things; and you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say, ‘Why not’?” – George Bernard Shaw
  29. “You can’t use up creativity. The more the you use, the more you have.” –Maya Angelou
  30. “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
  31. “It is wise to learn; it is God-like to create.” – John Saxe
  32. “Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous.” – Bill Moyers
  33. “Creativity is a natural extension of our enthusiasm.” – Earl Nightingale
  34. “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
  35. “Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.” – Scott Adams
  36. “Art is the stored honey of the human soul.” – Theodore Dreiser
  37. “Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” – Thomas Merton
  38. “Painting is easy when you don’t know how, but very difficult when you do.” – Edgar Degas
  39. “I think of art as the highest level of creativity. To me, it is one of the greatest sources of enjoyment.” – David Rockefeller
  40. “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
  41. “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
  42. “Creativity comes from a conflict of ideas.” – Donatella Versace
  43. “I am seeking. I am striving. I am in it with all my heart.” – Vincent van Gogh
  44. “If I could say it in words there would be no reason to paint.” – Edward Hopper
  45. “They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.” – Andy Warhol
  46. “Great art picks up where nature ends.” – Marc Chagall
  47. “The position of the artist is humble. He is essentially a channel.” – Piet Mondrian
  48. “Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.” – Salvador Dali
  49. “The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.” – Francis Bacon
  50. “To create one’s own world takes courage.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
  51. “The main thing is to be moved, to love, to hope, to tremble, to live.” – Auguste Rodin
  52. “It is important to express oneself…provided the feelings are real and are taken from you own experience.” – Berthe Morisot
  53. “To be an artist is to believe in life.” – Henry Moore
  54. “Every good painter paints what he is.” – Jackson Pollock
  55. “In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
  56. “Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing.  Making your unknown known is the important thing.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
  57. “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
  58. “Art must be an expression of love or it is nothing.” – Marc Chagall
  59. “Don’t be an art critic, but paint, there lies salvation.” – Paul Cézanne
  60. “If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing.” – Marc Chagall
  61. “A good artist has less time than ideas.” – Martin Kippenberger
  62. “I never paint dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality.” – Frida Kahlo
  63. “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
  64. “There is no must in art because art is free.” – Wassily Kandinsky
  65. “Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master.” – Leonardo da Vinci
  66. “If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all.” – Michelangelo
  67. “Nature is not only all that is visible to the eye, it also includes the inner pictures of the soul.” – Edvard Munch
  68. “Painting is a means of self-enlightenment.” – John Olsen
  69. “Art is the only way to run away without leaving home.” – Twyla Tharp
  70. “An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one.” – Charles Horton Cooley
  71. “One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself.” –Leonardo da Vinci
  72. “The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.” – Aristotle
  73. “No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.” – Oscar Wilde
  74. “Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.” – Pablo Picasso
  75. “Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one.” – Stella Adler
  76. “I want to touch people with my art. I want them to say, ‘he feels deeply, he feels tenderly.” – Vincent Van Gogh
  77. “Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.” – Pablo Picasso
  78. “An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.” – James McNeill Whistler
  79. “Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.” – Vincent Van Gogh
  80. “Inspiration does exist, but it must find you working.” – Pablo Picasso
  81. “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
  82. “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
  83. “If a man devotes himself to art, much evil is avoided that happens otherwise if one is idle.” – Albrecht Dürer
  84. “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.” – Pablo Picasso
  85. “Art is never finished, only abandoned.” – Leonardo Da Vinci
  86. “Everything has its beauty, but not everyone sees it.” – Andy Warhol
  87. “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
  88. “I dream of painting and then I paint my dream.” – Vincent Van Gogh
  89. “The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.” – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
  90. “A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.” – Michelangelo
  91. “The object isn’t to make art, it’s to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.” – Robert Henri
  92. “I invent nothing, I rediscover.” – Auguste Rodin
  93. “I would rather die of passion than of boredom.” – Vincent van Gogh
  94. “Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.” – Henry Ward Beecher
  95. “The chief enemy of creativity is ‘good’ sense.” – Pablo Picasso
  96. “Creativity is magic. Don’t examine it too closely.” – Edward Albee
  97. “Art is not a thing, it is a way.” – Elbert Hubbard
  98. “Color is the place where our brain and the universe meet.” – Paul Klee
  99. “Art is a line around your thoughts.” – Gustav Klimt
  100. “Learn the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist.” – Pablo Picasso

Want a FREE art lesson to stimulate creativity in your child or teen
(or even you)? Just click on the image below:

Want creative kids? Check out this list of 100 quotes on art and creativity to inspire your young artist!