Inspiring Female Artist Quotes 

Motivational Words To Live By

“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched, but must be felt with the heart.” -Helen Keller

 

"Any true artist is going to explore the medium as long as he can draw breath. It would be grotesque to paint the same way, over and over all your life. It's a kind of freeze." -Dorothea Tanning

 

“You learn for yourself not for others, not to show off, not to put the other one down/ learning is your secret, it is all you have, it is the only thing you can call your own. nobody can take it away…” -Louise Bourgeois 

 

“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” -Maya Angelou

 

“Inhale possibility, exhale creativity.” -Laura Jaworski

 

"Most of our lives we live closed up in ourselves, with a longing not to be alone, to include others in that life that is invisible and intangible. To make it visible and tangible, we need light and material, any material. And any material can take on the burden of what had been brewing in our consciousness or subconsciousness, in our awareness or in our dreams." -Anni Albers 

 

"I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life - and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do." -Georgia O'Keeffe

Fine Art Quotes By Famous Artists - Inspiring & Iconic Words

 

Jimson Weed, White Flower No. 1 by Georgia O'Keeffe

 

“To apprehend the world about us in all its brilliance and diversity, and to bear in mind both its inner and outer content.” -Natalia Goncharova

 

“As in the fourteen lines of a sonnet, a few strokes of the pencil can hold immensity.” -Dame Laura Knight

 

“I am happy to be alive as long as I can paint.” -Frida Kahlo

 

“When I attempt anything, I have a passionate determination to overcome every obstacle.” -Cecilia Beaux

 

"Keep your eye on your inner world and keep away from ads, idiots and movie stars." -Dorothea Tanning

  

“My art originates from hallucinations only I can see. I translate the hallucinations and obsessional images that plague me into sculptures and paintings. All my works in pastels are the products of obsessional neurosis and are therefore inextricably connected to my disease. I create pieces even when I don’t see hallucinations, though.” -Yayoi Kusama

 

Infinity Mirror Room Fireflies on Water by Yayoi Kusama

 

“I have made a solemn vow never to send my drawings because people have cheated me. In particular, just today I found... that, having done a drawing of souls in Purgatory for the Bishop of St. Gata, he, in order to spend less, commissioned another painter to do the painting using my work. If I were a man, I can't imagine it would have turned out this way.” -Artemisia Gentileschi

 

“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’Keefe

  

“Every day you have to abandon your past or accept it, and then, if you cannot accept it, you become a sculptor.” -Louise Bourgeois 

 

“Art is eternal, but life is short.” -Evelyn de Morgan

  

"I hate repetition. Even when I am home and have to buy milk, I go a different way each time to avoid having a habit of anything. Habits are really bad. So to me it is really important to live in what I call the spaces in-between. Bus stations, trains, taxis or waiting rooms in airports are the best places because you are open to destiny, you are open to everything and anything can happen." -Marina Abramovic

 

"I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me too. Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this and know that, yes, it's true I'm here, and I'm just as strange as you. I didn't want to be a woman artist. I just wanted to be an artist." - Isabel Bishop

 

"I paint flowers so they will not die. The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to, and I paint whatever passes through my head without any other consideration." -Frida Kahlo

 

Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird by Frida Kahlo

 

"Women can also be creative in total isolation. I know excellent women artists who do original work without any response to speak of. Maybe they are used to lack of feedback. Maybe they are tougher." -Elaine de Kooning

 

"Whether I'm painting or not, I have this overweening interest in humanity. Even if I'm not working, I'm still analyzing people." -Alice Neel

 

"Still, I wonder if more women artists, musicians, and writers aren't household names because we don't have enough faith in our own pursuits to give ourselves the time we desperately need to be transformed by a creative vision. Maybe that glass ceiling isn't really made of glass at all, but of sticky little fingers, dishes piled in the sink, and mortgages that demand two incomes." - Holly Robinson Peete

 

"As an artist, I never wanted to be fettered by gender nor recognized or defined as a female poet, musician or singer. They don't do that with men - nobody says Picasso, the male artist. Curators call me up and say, "We want your work to be in a show about women artists," and I'm like, why? For Christ's sake, do we have to attach a gender onto everything?" -Patti Smith

"Women artists need to break barriers in order for women's experience to be valuable." -Liz Phair

 

"I decided that if I could paint that flower in a huge scale, you could not ignore its beauty." -Georgia O'Keeffe

 

“It is our privilege and our adventure to discover our own special light.” -Evelyn Dunbar

 

A Land Girl and the Bail Bull by Evelyn Dunbar

 

"I've always sought to express a tension in form and meaning in order to achieve a veracity. I have come to the conclusion that the art world has to join us, women artists, not we join it. When women are in leadership roles and gain rewards and recognition, then perhaps 'we' (women and men) can all work together in art world actions." -Nancy Spero

 

"Being creative is not so much the desire to do something as the listening to that which wants to be done: the dictation of the materials." -Anni Albers

 

“I fight pain, anxiety, and fear every day, and the only method I have found that relieves my illness is to keep creating art. I followed the thread of art and somehow discovered a path that would allow me to live.” -Yayoi Kusama

 

"The camera is a remarkable instrument. Saturate yourself with your subject, and the camera will all but take you by the hand and point the way." -Margaret Bourke-White

 

"It was a little crazy. I realised then that the public can kill you. If you give them total freedom, they will become frenzied enough to kill you.... A man pressed the gun hard against my temple. I could feel his intent. And I heard the women telling the men what to do. The worst was the one man who was there always, just breathing. This, for me, was the most frightening thing. After the performance, I have one streak of white hair on my head. I cannot get rid of the feeling of fear for a long time. Because of this performance, I know where to draw the line so as not to put myself at such risk." -Marina Abramovic

 

“I paint with the stubbornness I need for living, and I've found that all painters who love their art do the same.” -Suzanne Valadon

 

The Blue Room Painting by Suzanne Valadon

 

"Why are there no great women artists?' sounds as ignorant of human geography as the query 'Why are there no Eskimo tennis teams?" -Francine du Plessix Gray

 

"To call yourself a Chinese artist or woman artist or African artist reflects a certain kind of condition. To me, that is not necessary." -Ai Weiwei

  

"There's only one thing in life for a woman; it's to be a mother... A woman artist must be... capable of making primary sacrifices. If painting is no longer needed, it seems a pity that some of us are born into the world with such a passion for line and color." -Mary Cassatt

 

The Child’s Bath by Mary Cassatt

 

"And I find art is something that gives you something that you need for your life. Just as religion is something that you need even if you constantly find it denied today." -Anni Albers

 

“The thought of continually eating something like macaroni spat out by machinery, fills me with fear and revulsion, so I make macaroni sculptures. I make them and make them and then keep on making them until I bury myself in the process. I call this 'obliteration.'” -Yayoi Kusama

 

"Your ego can become an obstacle to your work. If you start believing in your greatness, it is the death of your creativity." -Marina Abramovic

Rene Magritte Famous Quotes

 

Check out these Famous Artists who have shaped the art world!

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