Are you finding yourself procrastinating on those 2026 creativity goals? You’re not alone – research suggests that by mid-February, 80% of people have already let their New Year’s resolutions slip. Whether you promised yourself you’d visit more art exhibitions, sign up for a ceramics class or dust off a neglected sketchbook, consider this your nudge. Sometimes all it takes is the right words at the right moment. Here are nine to linger on.
1. “Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing.” Georgia O’Keeffe
2. “The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity.” Alberto Giacometti
3. “I never paint dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality.” Frida Kahlo
4. “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
5. “Colour is my day-long obsession, joy and torment.” Claude Monet
6. “No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.” Oscar Wilde
7. “There’s no diploma in the world that declares you as an artist–it’s not like becoming a doctor. You can declare yourself an artist and then figure out how to be an artist.” Kara Walker
8. “The beautiful, which is perhaps inseparable from art, is not after all tied to the subject, but to the pictorial representation. In this way and in no other does art overcome the ugly without avoiding it.” Paul Klee
9. “We all have the same experience and the same concern, but the artist must know exactly what the experience is. He must pursue the truth relentlessly.” Agnes Martin
