Art Education Quotes

“Why not spend that time on art: painting, sculpting, charcoal, pastel, oils? Are words or numbers more important than images? Who decides this? Does algebra move you to tears? Can plural possessives express the feelings in your heart? If you don't learn art now, you will never learn to breathe!”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak

“Thus the chief purpose of art education for life is to help students understand something about themselves and others through art and thereby contribute to personal growth, social progress, and a sense of global community.”
― Tom Anderson, Art for Life: Authentic Instruction in Art

“Today they are teaching the subject of art as a frill in school, partly due to intellectual preciousness that has crept into art departments with the making of the History of Art. Intellectualising places art on a pedestal only for the few, causing New Zealanders to revert to the invented snobbery that tends to ignore anything arty as exotic, unattainable, not wholesome.”
― Theresa Sjoquist, Yvonne Rust: Maverick Spirit

“In 1946 there was no money in art, no dealer galleries, no craft shops. After the war we started to teach art in every school for the first time. Our generation played a crucial role. We were the stepping stones towards today's galleries.”
― Theresa Sjoquist

“It's very hard to reach people in Greymouth with pottery or any form of art because they're allergic to it. Allergic to it ever since they began really because they've taken from the ground in the mining spirit without making or creating, and therefore anything that is creative they do not understand.”
― Theresa Sjoquist

“This is not a how-to book.
It is a how-to-think-about-how-to book.
In it I bombard you with images and metaphors with never a photograph or diagram in sight. Your mind's eye will create all the images in this text, and each mind is unique. Getting these, and other images, down on paper will provide you with fun, frustration, joy and despair. Like life,”
― Judith Mason, The Mind's Eye: An Introduction to Making Images

“What she wanted was technique. She wanted to paint like a Renaissance old master. She wanted to know what color Titian tinted his canvas before he started working on it. She wanted to know what colors Caravaggio mixed to make his lights. She wanted to know exactly which pigments Rubens utilized to achieve those juicy fleshy tones, what brown Rembrandt used in his shadows, what combination of oils and resins went into Vermeer's painting medium. She wanted someone to show her how to make Raphael's line and Michelangelo's muscle masses. She wanted to know what made a good composition, and what made a bad one. She wanted to know.”
― Helen Maryles Shankman, The Color of Light

“Lazy looking is not really looking at all. It is when we guess or approximate things. When you really interrogate what you are looking at and challenge yourself to use and invent a wide range of approaches to capturing what you see, your drawing's will start to reflect your unique way of looking.”
― Lucy Alexander, The Central Saint Martins Guide to Art & Design: Key lessons from the world-renowned Foundation course