Kenneth Coutts-Smith famous quotes

The revelatory or visionary is the province of the 'private' artist, who in order to render his personal world comprehensible or even tolerable, must force others to believe in it and therefore share it. It is said that 'the poet does not wish to be understood, but to be believed.
-- Kenneth Coutts-Smith

#Believe #Artist #Order

The language of images [of inner-oriented artists] does not follow a code structure that is evident and widely accepted, but is more likely to be a complex of symbols that have a profound meaning for the artists themselves.
-- Kenneth Coutts-Smith

#Artist #Profound #Doe

Most inner-oriented artists share a common characteristic, a certain quality of obsession.
-- Kenneth Coutts-Smith

#Artist #Quality #Common

The 'public' artist confirms the world that we already accept, though he inevitably widens our experience of it; his method is one of research, the progressive uncovering of detail.
-- Kenneth Coutts-Smith

#Artist #Details #Research

When the symbols are 'public' they usually act in an oblique manner, revealing themselves as archetypal symbols, which though familiar, have their central meanings obscured as is usual in esoteric imagery.
-- Kenneth Coutts-Smith

#Usual #Esoteric #Revealing

You can have whatever you want if you believe in yourself and keep your feet firmly planted in the ground.

Rather than making money I believe in making people happy, all other things are secondary. Money isn't important, creative satisfaction is

An artist's job is simply to take the mirror in front of your face and hold it there. It's not to give you any answers. It is simply to take that mirror and point it at you.

The artist never really has any control over the impact of his work. If he starts thinking about the impact of his work, then he becomes a lesser artist.

As an artist I would like to eliminate the symbolic pretty much, for black is interesting not as a color but as a non-color and as the absence of color.

Now almost every artist outside of New York is connected with some school or some museum school, and even in New York the majority are. That's an interesting fact when you take the idea of making money, making a living selling paintings. Only a dozen or two painters do that.

I must stress here the point that I appreciate clarity, order, meaning, structure, rationality: they are necessary to whatever provisional stability we have, and they can be the agents of gradual and successful change.

Order, thou eye of action.

What's my favourite food? One you order out.

In order to be artists we need to be in our studios, in our private rooms... in our private personal space... that sacred protected space, so we can make our work. That's the only work that's worth making, right? That's the place where we can be free enough and vulnerable enough to share what we have to share.