20 Artist Quotes about Why We Create (and what happens when we do)

Clockwise from top left: Neil Gaiman, Albert Einstein, Rumi, Twyla Tharp, Lynda Barry, Jean-Michel Basquiat

1. "Showing up for the work is the win that matters." - Julia Cameron

   
   

2. "I don't think about art when I'm working. I try to think about life." - Jean-Michel Basquiat

   
   

3. "A painting is not a picture of an experience, but is the experience." - Mark Rothko

   
   

4. "Art is the only way to run away without leaving home." - Twyla Tharp

   
   

5. “The artist sees what others only catch a glimpse of.” - Leonardo Da Vinci

   
   

6. The goal of life is rapture. Art is the way we experience it. - Joseph Campbell

   
   

7.  “Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” - Thomas Merton

   
   

8. “It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance, and I know of no substitute for the force and beauty of its process.” - Henry James

   
   

9. “To send light into the darkness of men’s hearts — such is the duty of the artist.” - Robert Schumann

   
   

10. “I paint as a way of looking for myself in the world.” - Amy Sherald

    
    

11. “Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one.” - Stella Adler

    
    

12. “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

    
    

13. “The artist’s job is to be a witness to his time in history.” - Robert Rauschenberg

    
    

14. “Play is the highest form of research.” - Albert Einstein

    
    

15. “You can’t sit around and wait for somebody to say who you are. You need to write it and paint it and do it .” - Faith Ringgold

    
    

16. “The more I paint the more I like everything.” - Jean-Michel Basquiat

    
    

17. "The world always seems brighter when you've just made something that wasn't there before." - Neil Gaiman

    
    

18. "The chief enemy of creativity is good sense." - Pablo Picasso

    
    

19. “Let the beauty of what you love be what you do. There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the earth.” - Rumi

    
    

20. “We don't create a fantasy world to escape reality, we create it to be able to stay. I believe we have always done this, used images to stand and understand what otherwise would be intolerable.”- Lynda Barry