Happy Artist Quotes & Sayings

All truly great art is optimistic. The individual artist is happy in his creative work. The fact that practically all great art is tragic does not in any way change the above thesis. — Upton Sinclair

An artist is an artist because he is not happy with the world, so he creates his own existence. — Robin Gibb

I don't think people were put here to be happy. I think if you decide to be an artist or a writer, you automatically accept the responsibility of being alone. However, after your 50 or 60 years are up you'll be able to look back and see this output that you've done that will endure long after you're gone, and will continue to fill the minds of millions of people. — Jim Steranko

Find what makes you happy and go for it with all your heart. It will be hard, but I promise it will be worth it. — Charlotte Eriksson

As useful as an unhappy artist. As useless as a happy philosopher. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

I so much appreciate it when anybody tries to make something and tries to be an artist - I'm happy to see the work. — Laurie Anderson

I always try to make everyone mellow down, make sure everybody's happy. The people I have employed have always kind of stayed with us. A lot of people who come to work for you are artists in their own right. And they want to work for you because they want to pick something up. — Damien Hirst

If a carpenter makes a chair that's comfortable for the person who's going to sit in it, he's done his job. If a train engineer gets a train in on time, he's going to make someone happy who's waiting at the station. And if an artist draws the kind of a picture that people are going to enjoy looking at, or he makes a visual story which people are going to enjoy reading, he's done his job. — Jack Kirby

I believe the way to write a good play is to convince yourself it is easy to do
then go ahead and do it with ease. Don't maul, don't suffer, don't groan till the first draft is finished. A play is a pheonix and it dies a thousand deaths. Usually at night. In the morning it springs up again from its ashes and crows like a happy rooster. It is never as bad as you think, it is never as good. It is somewhere in between, and success or failure depends on which end of your emotional gamut concerning its value it approaches more closely. But it is much more likely to be good if you think it is wonderful while you are writing the first draft. An artist must believe in himself. Your belief is contagious. Others may say he is vain, but they are affected. — Tennessee Williams

Coaching is my way of helping aspiring and professional writers get the kind of help and guidance that it took me years to piece together. I do workshops and coach people one on one. It's really fun and I'm happy that I can support artists who are looking to move ahead in their work and career. — Steven C. Harper

I am not one of those artists who is cemented in one way. I am able to, you know, make the happy, jovial, lighthearted music too. We need that in life too. So it's like that to me. — Jimmy Cliff

Perhaps it's good for one to suffer. Can an artist do anything if he's happy? Would he ever want to do anything? What is art, after all, but a protest against the horrible inclemency of life? — Aldous Huxley

You make me tremendously happy to hold me undivided - to let me be the artist, as it were, and yet not forgo the man, the animal, the hungry, insatiable lover. No woman has ever granted me all the privileges I need - and you, why you sing out so blithely, so boldly, with a laugh even - yes, you invite me to go ahead, be myself, benture anything. I adore you for that. That is where you are truly regal, a woman extraordinary. What a woman you are! I laugh to myself now when I think of you. I have no fear of your femaleness. — Henry Miller

Over the years I have learned that creating art has made me happy. I used to be a lawyer and I'm much happier being an artist. — Nathan Sawaya

I feel like artists that are always quite sad in real life always make really happy music, and artists who are really bouncy and bubbly always make really sad music. — Marina And The Diamonds

I know some people are like "I'm depressed and I'm a struggling artist" and that really works for some people, but that doesn't work for me. I have to be really happy, even when I'm writing my depressing songs; I have to come through that stage before I can write. I have to be in a good place. I'm a positive person. — Charli XCX

I've never been somewhere I belonged, but there are places where I think I could be happy. Like San Francisco. Well, do art museums count? Because I feel like I belong in them. — Heather Demetrios

Exploiting yourself sexually is not a good look. I don't find it encouraging ... I just stand there and sing. I'm not worried that I'm a 'plus size' and so much bigger than other artists. No matter what you look like the key is to be happy with yourself. — Adele

Reggae was always a passion of mine. I used to say in interviews that I would love to do a reggae album. But it consumed my life being a hip-hop artist and being Heavy D, which I'm happy and proud of. — Heavy D

You asked for a loving God: you have one. The great spirit you so lightly invoked, the 'lord of terrible aspect,' is present: not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way, not the cold philanthropy of conscientious magistrate, nor the care of a host who feels responsible for the comfort of his guests, but the consuming fire Himself, the Love that made the worlds, persistent as the artist's love for his work and despotic as a man's love for a dog, provident and venerable as a father's love for a child, jealous, inexorable, exacting as love between the sexes. — C.S. Lewis

If you're an artist, the problem is to make a picture work whether you are happy or not. — Willem De Kooning

Cleanses and products don't make you look more beautiful. They certainly help, but if you reach contentment, you're set. My makeup artist, Melanie Iglesias, couldn't figure out why my skin looks so good. I think it's because I'm happy! — Olivia Wilde

Mary Ocher gives me the chills, she frightens me with her feral soul.
Her sound is of a true outsider artist, immaculately self possessed.
Was this recorded this century? Or out of a basement that's she's been imprisoned all her
life? Time to set her loose on the world. I'm so happy she exists. Set me free Mary! — Karen O

As an artist, you want to make good stories and create good art; as a businessman, you want to make money and make sure the investors are happy. The two will always clash, unfortunately. — Neil Jackson

There is no escape. You can't be a vagabond and an artist and still be a solid citizen, a wholesome, upstanding man. You want to get drunk, so you have to accept the hangover. You say yes to the sunlight and pure fantasies, so you have to say yes to the filth and the nausea. Everything is within you, gold and mud, happiness and pain, the laughter of childhood and the apprehension of death. Say yes to everything, shirk nothing. Don't try to lie to yourself. You are not a solid citizen. You are not a Greek. You are not harmonious, or the master of yourself. You are a bird in the storm. Let it storm! Let it drive you! How much have you lied! A thousand times, even in your poems and books, you have played the harmonious man, the wise man, the happy, the enlightened man. In the same way, men attacking in war have played heroes, while their bowels twitched. My God, what a poor ape, what a fencer in the mirror man is- particularly the artist- particularly myself! — Hermann Hesse

It's difficult to really be an artist nowadays. People are just on another page. You have a society that needs you to say something, but they don't want to give you the environment to be able to be just a functioning, happy, normal person. It's like, the industry is at odds with you, the society is at odds with you. You start to live in this very confined box where it's like, It's "me" and "them." — Mos Def

Well you can see that I'm still in motion. It happens that you share the music with the audience. That is the best happiness an artist can have. I'm not alone on stage but with a group of musicians. So the more the music is successful, the more the audience feel happy about the music. It's the responsiblity of an artist to make his fans happy. That is proposition. I'm always talking about proposition. — Manu Dibango

I'm only concerned with making music that I love and that my fans will respond to. I am happy to see other really good young artists able to flourish and pursue their careers. — Hoodie Allen

I'm an artist. And I'm happy that I was there at the commencement of this music, this Jamaican music, to put my contribution and help to establish it. — Jimmy Cliff

I want to be an artist that everyone can relate to, that's young, happy and fun. — Britney Spears

So I am happy with what I did. And I tell you something, when an artist does something, he doesn't have at the beginning, big goals and objectives, you do the thing because you love it. — Mahmoud Reda

You will not always be happy but I guarantee it that you will always be lucky as an artist when you least expect it. — Abigail George

Just as there is a moment when the artist must stop, when the sculpture must be left as it is, the painting untouched - just as a determination not to know serves the maker more than all the resources of clairvoyance - so there must be a minimum of ignorance in order to perfect a life in happiness. Those who lack such a thing must set about acquiring it: unintelligence must be earned. — Albert Camus

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

The objective.. is to achieve a comfort level between the cook/artist/performer and the customer/viewer/diner. And if we can achieve that, and the customers are happy and the cooks are happy, then we have a great experience. — Mario Batali

I'm very happy with my lot. I like the variety I get. You don't want to spend your life repeating yourself. It's true of any kind of artist, you want to explore as wide and far as you can go, so that's what I've been trying to do. — Toni Collette

The artist in his teens who is happy is a charlatan. Life comes bursting in all around lis too suddenly, too crudely, too cruelly, for happiness. — William McFee

They say that negative things like stress, anxiety, tension, sorrow, and depression "squeeze the tube" so ideas don't flow through it. But if you get rid of that negativity, which goes away naturally when you transcend every day, these ideas are more freely flowing, and you get happy in the doing. You get fresh and inspiring ideas, and a bigger picture starts to emerge of the world and life. It's very good for the artist, businessman, fisherman, and any kind of person really. — David Lynch

I have an office full of product from brands trying to be in videos and an inbox full of songs from artists, but at the end of the day if the artist doesn't support the brand or it doesn't make sense for the song, then it will never work. What we do is try to pair them up so that both sides are happy. — Adam Kluger

One of the things that I am happy about in my life as an artist is that I am not considered a Hispanic artist. — Andres Serrano

If a good editor will let me tell my story with the right artist, I'm happy. — Brian K. Vaughan

I have for many years endeavored to make this vital truth clear; and still people marvel when I tell them that I am happy. They imagine that my limitations weigh heavily upon my spirit, and chain me to the rock of despair. Yet, it seems to me, happiness has very little to do with the senses. If we make up our minds that this is a drab and purposeless universe, it will be that, and nothing else. On the other hand, if we believe that the earth is ours, and that the sun and moon hang in the sky for our delight, there will be joy upon the hills and gladness in the fields because the Artist in our souls glorifies creation. Surely, it gives dignity to life to believe that we are born into this world for noble ends, and that we have a higher destiny than can be accomplished within the narrow limits of this physical life. — Helen Keller

He wanted to be an artist, an artist of life wasn't enough for him, although precisely this concept provides everything we need to be happy if we think about it. — Thomas Bernhard

"But when I fell in love with black, it contained all color. It wasn't a negation of color. It was an acceptance. Because black encompasses all colors. Black is the most aristocratic color of all ... You can be quiet and it contains the whole thing."
Happy birthday to Louise Nevelson (1899-1988)! — Louise Nevelson

I feel that this is my artistic home, and I'm very happy to be a California artist together with many others who are not from here originally but who decided to make this the center of their activities. There's something about that that I find very inspiring and satisfying. — Esa-Pekka Salonen

I'm one of those people who thinks you can have a happy life and still be an artist. — Shelley Duvall

I am personally happy for artists to make as much money as they can while they can to carry them through the times when they can't. — Michael Craig-Martin

If I had to play only for people who liked the music because they heard it on the radio, it wouldn't make me happy. That's why I'm working so hard to have, yes, a profile as an artist, but also a profile as a DJ. — David Guetta

Painting, like poetry, selects in the universe whatever she deems most appropriate to her ends. She assembles in a single fantastic personage, circumstances and features which nature distributes among many individuals. From this combination, ingeniously composed, results that happy imitation by virtue of which the artist earns the title of inventor and not of servile copyist. — Francisco Goya

I'd like to do music in the same way - in a witty way. People think of YG artists as rarely appearing on TV but I'd like to make Big Bang fans happy through various mediums. — Seungri

All artists and creative people are basically unhappy people. If you were happy, that would mean you were content with the world as it was and why would you ever want to change it? — Peter Schjeldahl

I have no idea how to be an artist and a lover, so I chose the one most likely to make me happy when I'm eighty and gazing back on a long and productive life. — J.C. Lillis

I don't agree with this romantic fantasy that people who suffer from depression are more likely to be artists. I find that I am more creative when I am happy actually. — Sinead O'Connor

You see an artist, a creative person, can accept criticism or can live with the criticism much more easily than with being ignored. Criticism makes you feel alive. If somebody is bothered enough to speak vituperatively about it, you feel you have touched a nerve and you are at least 'in touch.' You are not happy that he doesn't like it, but you feel you are in contact with life. — Saul Bass

Over time, the life of a productive artist becomes filled with useful conventions and practical methods, so that a string of finished pieces continues to appear at the surface. And in truly happy moments those artistic gestures move beyond simple procedure, and acquire an inherent aesthetic all their own. They are your artistic hearth and home, the working-places-to-be that link form and feeling. They become - like the dark colors and asymmetrical lilt of the Mazurka - inseparable from the life of their maker. They are canons. They allow confidence and concentration. They allow not knowing. They allow the automatic and unarticulated to remain so. Once you have found the work you are meant to do, the particulars of any single piece don't matter all that much. — David Bayles

Artists are on the average less happy than men of science. — Bertrand Russell

We artists are a different breed of people. We're a happy bunch. — Bob Ross

Whenever the truth is uncovered, the artist will always cling with rapt gaze to what still remains covering even after such uncovering; but the theoretical man enjoys and finds satisfaction in the discarded covering and finds the highest object of his pleasure in the process of an ever happy uncovering that succeeds through his own efforts. — Friedrich Nietzsche

When I first came into the business, I had to, for the sake of being able to sell myself as an artist, always be happy and jovial and smiling. I was the happy nice girl, and I am the happy nice girl, but I have my moments, too. — Kelly Price

What do you think an artist is An imbecile who has only his eyes if he is a painter, or his ears if he is a musician, or a lyre at every level of his heart if he is a poet, or, if he is merely a boxer, only his muscle On the contrary, he is at the same time a political being, constantly alert to the heartrending, burning, or happy events in the world, molding himself in their likeness. — Pablo Picasso

I'm happy to entertain kids you know. It's my biggest pleasure to like see a twelve year old picking up a book that I did and dreaming about being a comic book artist. That's what the magic is, everything else is just production and a job. — Marko Djurdjevic

The only happy artist is a dead artist, because only then you can't change. After I die, I'll probably come back as a paintbrush. — Sylvester Stallone

Every artist that becomes famous has a team, and needs to convince someone to believe in them enough to have others rally around them to achieve stardom. If I can be that person, then I am happy to do it. — Wendy Starland

Not 'I don't give a f-' to just be reckless and do whatever, but 'I don't give a f- what they say.' ... I know who I am and what I'm doing in my life and what I've accomplished and continue to accomplish as a performer, as a writer, as an artist, as a person, as a human being. I'm happy with the man I'm becoming. — Justin Bieber

I'm a professional artist, that's how I make my living. So I watch the market. There is, it seems to me, a lot of pure financial speculation, and I don't think that's terribly healthy. Though as long as the money is getting back to the artist, I think that's good. I'm very happy younger artists can make money faster than we could. And we were making it faster than a generation before us. — Brice Marden

I would tell new artists to be themselves. Show your talents first, have your own identity, don't try to be Lady Saw. If you're coming out to be like me, once you get in, return back to yourself, that's the only way you'll be happy. Don't come in trying to be me and then disrespect me. — Lady Saw

Very few men can be genuinely happy in a life involving continual self-assertion against the skepticism of the mass of mankind, unless they can shut themselves up in a coterie and forget the cold outer world. The man of science has no need of a coterie, since he is thought well of by everybody except his colleagues. The artist, on the contrary, is in the painful situation of having to choose between being despised and being despicable. — Bertrand Russell

Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness. I don't think an artist can ever be happy. — Georges Simenon

There a lot of other things I love to do. I consider myself as an artist, so I dance, I paint, I sing, so as long as I'm creating, I'm happy. — Grace Gealey

Every artist says that he/she wants to do something challenging, and I'm not any different. If someone approaches me with a serious role, I'll be more than happy. — Kapil Sharma

My greatest accomplishment is the freedom for doing what I want to do with my music ... I love my freedom so I'm happy I am a free artist. — Ziggy Marley

Sometimes I think I shouldn't explain much about my work because people will just feel what they feel when they see it. They'll love it or hate it or enjoy it on their own, like how I've looked at abstract paintings of other artists and cried or felt happy because I've felt, "Wow, I've lived that, I've understood that." — Jose Parla

The myth of 'You have to be a tortured artist' is a myth," says Lin. "You can have a happy, healthy life and still go to all these crazy dark places in your writing, and then go play with your child and hug your wife. — Jeremy McCarter

My hardest thing was to let go, to be happy for everybody and just to enjoy. And go back to being what you were before you became an artist, and that was just a fan. — Garth Brooks

I'm doing what great artists before me did, like Judy Garland, Sammy Davis, Eddie Cantor. I'm doing what they were doing, not at their level yet, but one day I will be. I'm just happy to be in their company. — Mike Tyson

No matter how happy or hopeful I am, I always tend to drift back to that. It's underneath all the music I've ever written ... An artist is trying to tell you how he's feeling. And if that accidentally becomes entertaining, it becomes a career. — Don McLean