Some pages feel like walking into a neighborhood mural — color, memory, and courage layered together. These Art & Artists quotes honor the way creativity carries a people’s laughter, struggle, and hope. As Romare Bearden reminds us, “Art is the soul of a people.” This gallery gathers voices who paint with love, protect dignity, and keep consciousness awake.

Great art can only be created out of love. ~ James Baldwin

You bring to a painting your own experience. ~ Jacob Lawrence

Art is a way of possessing destiny. ~ Marvin Gaye

An artist represents an oppressed people and makes revolution irresistible. ~ Toni Cade Bambara

The most perfect technique is that which is not noticed at all. ~ Pablo Casals

Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better. ~ André Gide

Picasso believed that drawing is a means of possessing a thing... I draw what I love as a means of keeping it. ~ Nancy Reinke

Once I heard it stated and now I believe it to be true that there is no true art without religion. The artist himself may not think he is religious, but if he is sincere his sincerity in itself is religion. ~ Emily Carr

Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead. ~ W. H. Auden

In a sick world, it is the first duty of the artist to get well. ~ Jean Toomer

When I draw and paint things become clearer. I feel alive. ~ Yayoi Kusama

All art is communication of the artist’s ideas, sounds, thoughts. ~ Lionel Hampton

Van Gogh: $12 million. Rembrandt: $13 million. Vermeer: $30 million. Gauguin: $39 million. You wouldn’t guess it from these rock-star price tags, but all these artists died in poverty. ~ Joseph Hart

The defining function of the artist is to cherish consciousness. ~ Max Eastman

The more I think about it, the more I realize there is nothing more artistic than to love others. ~ Vincent Van Gogh