Female Artist Quotes & Sayings

You got a handful of great guys - Ne-Yo, R. Kelly, Usher. You have a handful of great female artists. But for the most part the music world's changing and change is good. You have to make adjustments if you want to survive in that world. — Nas

The being who, for most men, is the source of the most lively, and even, be it said, to the shame of philosophical delights, the most lasting joys; the being towards or for whom all their efforts tend for whom and by whom fortunes are made and lost; for whom, but especially by whom, artists and poets compose their most delicate jewels; from whom flow the most enervating pleasures and the most enriching sufferings - woman, in a word, is not, for the artist in general ... only the female of the human species. She is rather a divinity, a star. — Charles Baudelaire

Jack Byrne's Fiction House became known for its powerful, invincible female heroes. At a time when many publishers had none, Fiction House employed more than twenty women artists.46 The popularity of comics soared. Gaines, who did not tend to hire women to do anything except secretarial work, began publishing All-American Comics in 1939. That same year, Superman became the first comic-book character to have an entire comic book all to himself; he could also be heard on the radio.47 The first episode of Batman appeared in Detective Comics #27, in May 1939. Three months later, Byrne Holloway Marston, staff artist for the Marston Chronicle, drew the first installment of The Adventures of Bobby Doone. — Jill Lepore

Every man who is any kind of artist has a great deal of female in him. I act and give of myself as a man, but I register and receive with the soul of a woman. The only really good artists are feminine. I can't admit the existence of an artist whose dominant personality is masculine. — Orson Welles

It's hard to be taken seriously if you're a young, female artist making pop music; you never know how people are going to react. — Alessia Cara

I don't care what people think. I don't care how many dislikes I get on Youtube. I don't care how many people compare to every single female artist in the industry, because we're both white and sing. I do this because I love it, and I do it because this is what I feel like I was born to do, I feel like I was born to write music to heal the world. — Jessie J.

I think that I'm going to be including a lot of anonymous female artists in what I look at and incorporate. Most textiles are created by women. Generally, most stuff that's not in the canon is created by women. — Laura Owens

A female artist friend of mine recently told me that she was advised to 'look more slutty.' I asked her boyfriend what the equivalent advice for a man would be. He said to be more muscular. That made me rush to the gym. — Mark Kostabi

A historic, in-depth study of what it means to risk one's life to be an artist. It is also a depiction of sexual confusions, ironic outrage and rage, and the shedding of society's armor to create a female knight in pursuit of a vision. Georgia O'Keeffe is the one woman who was there first in the world of art. — Sandra Hochman

I am part man, and I notice women's breasts and thighs with the calculation of a man choosing a mistress ... but that is the artist and the analytical attitude toward the female body ... for I am more a woman; even as I long for full breasts and a beautiful body, so do I abhor the sensuousness which they bring ... I desire the things which will destroy me in the end... — Sylvia Plath

Statistically in the UK, there are so many fewer female composers than male songwriters and they're marketed in a way that - females are marketed in a way that they're these independent unique artists writing their own stuff, and they're not, because fourteen percent of PRS goes to women. — Kate Nash

It was hard to get jobs on farms doing wool-classing, but I got them. They had to learn to like a female wool-classer. — Theresa Sjoquist

There's so much about Dolly Parton that every female artist should look to, whether it's reading her quotes or reading her interviews or going to one of her live shows. She's been such an amazing example to every female songwriter out there. — Taylor Swift

To diminish the worth of women, men had to diminish the worth of the moon. They had to drive a wedge between human beings and the trees and the beasts and the waters, because trees and beasts and waters are as loyal to the moon as to the sun. They had to drive a wedge between thought and feeling ... At first they used Apollo as the wedge, and the abstract logic of Apollo made a mighty wedge, indeed, but Apollo the artist maintained a love for women, not the open, unrestrained lust that Pan has, but a controlled longing that undermined the patriarchal ambition. When Christ came along, Christ, who slept with no female ... Christ, who played no musical instrument, recited no poetry, and never kicked up his heels by moonlight, this Christ was the perfect wedge. Christianity is merely a system for turning priestesses into handmaidens, queens into concubines, and goddesses into muses. — Tom Robbins

In the case of an artistic practice that performs female narcissism..., the threat lies in its making superfluous the arbiters of artistic value. Already presuming her desirability, [she] obviates the modern critical system; loving herself, she needs no confirmation of her artistic 'value — Amelia Jones

Being a pop-leaning, female artist, you'd think that I'd have my record company breathing down my neck and trying to control everything I'm doing. Actually, they've just kind of let me take the wheel. — Halsey

People ask why there are so few female artists who succeed. It's because women are not ready to sacrifice as much as men. Women want a man, they want a family, they want to have children, they want to be loved, and to be an artist. And they can't; it's impossible. — Marina Abramovic

She knew better: when artistry seems most elusive is when you must focus, dig deep, and force yourself to think about how to give form to an idea that seems too vague to express. — Maryanne O'Hara

When human beings have been fascinated by the contemplation of their own hearts, the more intricate biological pattern of the female has become a model for the artist, the mystic, and the saint. When mankind turns instead to what can be done, altered, built, invented, in the outer world, all natural properties of men, animals, or metals become handicaps to be altered rather than clues to be followed. — Margaret Mead

In the case of Michel Angelo we have an artist who with brush and chisel portrayed literally thousands of human forms; but with this peculiarity, that while scores and scores of his male figures are obviously suffused and inspired by a romantic sentiment, there is hardly one of his female figures that is so, - the latter being mostly representative of woman in her part as mother, or sufferer, or prophetess or poetess, or in old age, or in any aspect of strength or tenderness, except that which associates itself especially with romantic love. Yet the cleanliness and dignity of Michel Angelo's male figures are incontestable, and bear striking witness to that nobility of the sentiment in him, which we have already seen illustrated in his sonnets. — Edward Carpenter

Don't live like a CEO when you're still a sandwich artist. — Sophia Amoruso

Actually, I know for a fact there are some young female artists who don't even sing on their own records and who don't sing live. And that is pathetic. — Avril Lavigne

You also said in Rolling Stone that your look is based on mine. The look I chose, I chose on purpose at a time when my record company were encouraging me to do what you have done. I felt I would rather be judged on my talent and not my looks. I am happy that I made that choice, not least because I do not find myself on the proverbial rag heap now that I am almost 47 yrs of age.. which unfortunately many female artists who have based their image around their sexuality, end up on when they reach middle age. — Sinead O'Connor

Even then, retailers learned early that shoppers prefer their shopping suggestions not be too truthful. One of the great unwritten chapters of retail intelligence programming featured a "personal shopper" program that all-too-accurately modeled the shoppers' desires and outputted purchase ideas based on what shoppers really wanted as opposed to what they wanted known that they wanted. This resulted in one overcompensatingly masculine test user receiving suggestions for an anal plug and a tribute art book for classic homoerotic artist Tom of Finland, while a female test user in the throes of a nasty divorce received suggestions for a small handgun, a portable bandsaw, and several gallons of an industrial solvent used to reduce organic matter to an easily drainable slurry. — John Scalzi

It's important for any artist - particularly female artists - to feel completely comfortable and to know what they're trying to do. — Laura Mvula

Mankind occurs as male or female, as something or nothing. Woman has no share in ontological reality, no relation to the thing-in-itself, which, in the deepest interpretation, is the absolute, is God. Man in his highest form, the genius, has such a relation, and for him the absolute is either the conception of the highest worth of existence, in which case he is a philosopher; or it is the wonderful fairyland of dreams, the kingdom of absolute beauty, and then he is an artist. — Otto Weininger

People weren't even aware that I wrote my own songs. The media just promoted me as a female body. It's like I've had to prove that I'm an artist. — Kate Bush

Every artist is both male and female, and ... sometimes, the two great elements are in conjunction with him, so that all by himself he suddenly gets the melody and the burst of feeling of a great symphony without any external stimuli. — Ruth St. Denis

I don't like being under someone elses thumb. I'm very supportive of other female artists, especially those trying to make their own statement ... trying to do what they want instead of being someone else's Barbie doll. — Irene Cara

So perhaps the reason I shuddered at the idea of writing something about 'Christian art' is that to paint a picture or to write a story or to compose a song is an incarnational activity. The artist is a servant who is willing to be a birth-giver. In a very real sense the artist (male or female) should be like Mary, who, when the angel told her that she was to bear the Messiah, was obedient to the command. Obedience is an unpopular word nowadays, but the artist must be obedient to the work, whether it be a symphony, a painting, or a story for a small child. I believe that each work of art, whether it is a work of great genius or something very small, comes to the artist and says 'Here I am. Enflesh me. Give birth to me.' And the artist either says 'My soul doth magnify the Lord' and willingly becomes the bearer of the work, or refuses; but the obedient response is not necessicarily a conscious one, and not everyone has the humble, courageous obedience of Mary. — Madeleine L'Engle

The techniques are all means of dealing with one simple idea: She wrote it. (That is, the "wrong" person
in this case, female
has created the "right" value
i.e., art.)
Denial of Agency: She didn't write it.
Pollution of Agency: She shouldn't have written it.
Double Standard of Content: Yes, but look what she wrote about.
False Categorizing: She is not really she [an artist] and it is not really it [serious, of the right genre, aesthetically sound, important, etc.] so how could "she" have written "it"?
Or simply: Neither "she" nor "it" exists (simple exclusion). — Joanna Russ

The music business is a place where the artists are all treated like we're working for the people who are working for us. That can obviously be exaggerated when you're a female. — Sinead O'Connor

I came at a time where male artists where dominating, so I had to do something quick to get people's attention. I wanted to let people know that women artists can hold their own compare to the men. Sex got their attention, while I open the road for the other female artists. — Lady Saw

It's easy to forget, given her scandal-tinged life and tragic death, how incredibly talented Whitney Houston was. She holds the world record as the most-awarded female act of all time, with over 415 major recognitions during her career. She is the only artist to chart seven consecutive number one songs. — Charles Duhigg

A painting walks into the room supported by the collector. It is the painting of a nude by a contemporary artist. She is scarred by shadows from venetian blinds. "The ritual scarification of light and shadow," I say. But am thinking, silently, the female nude is the self-ironization of the male. She, in his shadow, by design. — Carla Harryman

One of the great unwritten chapters of retail intelligence programming featured a "personal shopper" program that all-too-accurately modeled the shoppers' desires and outputted purchase ideas based on what shoppers really wanted as opposed to what they wanted known that they wanted. This resulted in one overcompensatingly masculine test user receiving suggestions for an anal plug and a tribute art book for classic homoerotic artist Tom of Finland, while a female test user in the throes of a nasty divorce received suggestions for a small handgun, a portable bandsaw, and several gallons of an industrial solvent used to reduce organic matter to an easily drainable slurry. After history's first recorded instance of a focus group riot, the personal shopper program was extensively rewritten. — John Scalzi

Set aside the old traditional notion of female as nurturer and male as leader; set aside, too, the new traditional notion of female as superwoman and male as oppressor. Begin with that most frightening of all things, a clean slate. And then look, every day, at the choices you are making, and when you ask yourself why you are making them, find this answer: Because they are what I want, or wish for. Because they reflect who and what I am.
This is the hard work of life in the world, to acknowledge within yourself the introvert, the clown, the artist, the homebody, the goofball, the thinker. Look inside. That way lies dancing to the melodies spun out by your own heart. — Anna Quindlen

In the tradition of great female artists, Karla Bonoff, Bonnie Raitt, Christine McVie, Shawn
Colvin, Sarah McLachlan ... now enter Maia Sharp. — Art Garfunkel

I've admired Alicia Keys since before I got into the music industry, just everything she represents as a female artist. — Melanie Fiona

42. What is the name of her first EP? Title 43. When was her first EP released? September 9, 2014 44. What was she nominated for at the 2014 American Music Awards? New Artist of the Year 45. What was she nominated for at the 2014 MTV Europe Music Awards? Best Song with a Social Message 46. What was she nominated for at the 2014 NewNowNext Awards? Best New Female Musician 47. What was she nominated for at the 2014 Capricho Awards? Revelation International 48. What was she nominated for at the 2015 People's Choice Awards? Favorite Breakout Artist and Favorite Song 49. What was she nominated for at the 2015 Grammy Awards? Record of the Year and Song of the Year 50. Which albums of hers are self-released? I'll Sing with You and Only 17 — Nancy Smith

For a man it's like if something goes on on-stage you'll have a drink at the bar and talk about it. With a female artist it's a big deal, you have a meeting and she's mad at you for the next couple of shows! — Chris Johnson

The artist is a servant who is willing to be a birthgiver. In a very real sense the artist (male or female) should be like Mary who, when the angel told her that she was to bear the Messiah, was obedient to the command.
... I believe that each work of art, whether it is a work of great genius, or something very small, comes to the artist and says, "Here I am. Enflesh me. Give birth to me." And the artist either says, "My soul doth magnify the Lord," and willingly becomes the bearer of teh work, or refuses; but the obedient response is not necessarily a conscious one, and not everyone has the humble, courageous obedience of Mary.
As for Mary, she was little more than a child when the angel came to her; she had not lost her child's creative acceptance of the realities moving on the other side of the everyday world. We lose our ability to see angels as we grow older, and that is a tragic loss. — Madeleine L'Engle

I feel totally female. I didn't compete with men and I don't want to look like a man! I love being a lady and dressing up and masquerading and wearing all the fineries. I'm breaking down the idea that the artist has to look poor, with berets. — Louise Berliawsky Nevelson

I've always been inspired by female performers and artists who really surround who they are around their voice. For me, it's always been about the voice. I wanna hear someone just sit by a piano, on a stool, and just sing - and that's it! — Lea Michele

I am a black British female artist, so I must be like Ms Dynamite, I must be like Shystie, I must be like Jamelia, but we're all different. — Estelle

I keep getting compared to Marina and the Diamonds because she's kind of in the same place as me at the moment. It's quite annoying being compared, actually, because it almost downgrades your work and makes you feel like you're just another female artist. — Ellie Goulding

I don't have a beef with any female artist. — Keri Hilson

We don't all have to take the same coordinates to get to the same destination. Being a young African American female artist, I want to open doors for young black girls. — Janelle Monae

Other than the 'Sesame Street' soundtrack, which I was obsessed with, the first artist I really felt I'd discovered on my own was Amy Winehouse. She was the first female artist I wanted to write like and sing like and be like. — Alessia Cara

I never felt oppressed because of my gender. When I'm writing a poem or drawing, I'm not a female; I'm an artist. — Patti Smith

Look it - you start out as an artist, I started out when I was nineteen, and you're full of defenses. You have all of this stuff to prove. You have all of these shields in front of you. All your weapons are out. It's like you're going into battle. You can accomplish a certain amount that way. But then you get to a point where you say, "But there's this whole other territory I'm leaving out." And that territory becomes more important as you grow older. You begin to see that you leave out so much when you go to battle with the shield and all the rest of it. You have to start including that other side or die a horrible death as an artist with your shield stuck on the front of your face forever. You can't grow that way. And I don't think you can grow as a person that way, either. There just comes a point when you have to relinquish some of that and risk becoming more open to the vulnerable side, which I think is the female side. It's much more courageous than the male side. — Sam Shepard