Top 1200 Graffiti Artist Quotes & Sayings

Why was the painting made? What ideas of the artist can we sense? Can the personality and sensitivity of the artist be felt when studying the work? What is the artist telling us about his or her feelings about the subject? What response do I get from the message of the artist? Do I know the artist better because of the painting?

I did an art show for Donald Trump at his house in Palm Beach, Florida. It was a bunch of pop art and stuff like that, so I wasn't doing any graffiti at that time, so I'd say from about 2000 to 2006, I wasn't doing any graffiti.

Bursts of gold on lavender melting into saffron. It's the time of day when the sky looks like it has been spray-painted by a graffiti artist.

Currently, it was leading him through a neighborhood that was on the downside of whatever curve you hoped you'd bought your property on the upside of. Graffiti and garbage were everywhere here. They were everywhere in the city, if it came to that, but elsewhere the garbage was better quality, and the graffiti was close to being correctly spelled. The whole area was waiting for something to happen, like a really bad fire.

I didn't start doing graffiti until two years after I got to New York. Jean Michel Basquiat was one of my main inspirations for doing graffiti. For a year I didn't know who Jean Michel was, but I knew his work.

Graffiti is art, but you don't see graffiti in the National Gallery. Graffiti is on the street - that's where it belongs.

I had just been doing graffiti around New York and this real estate investor guy had walked through meat packing in New York and saw some of my graffiti. He was impressed and asked if I sold canvases. I really had not made any canvases of my graffiti work yet, but told him I could make one for him. He then commissioned me to make ten paintings and put on my first art show. Between the sold out show and the cops chasing after me it created a lot of media and I've been doing really well since then.

One piece of graffiti doesn't mean much. Forty pieces of graffiti might mean something... It's all about connecting the dots.

The first choice an artist makes is precisely to be an artist, and if he chooses to be an artist it is in consideration of what he is himself and because of a certain idea he has of art

To call yourself a Chinese artist or woman artist or African artist reflects a certain kind of condition. To me, that is not necessary.

I wouldn’t want to be labelled unless it was something much broader and inclusive such as an ecological artist or a visionary artist, but there’s a constraint in the definition of a feminist artist, you’re an artist and you’re a feminist.

Writing graffiti is about the most honest way you can be an artist. It takes no money to do it, you don't need an education to understand it, and there's no admission fee.

Gray hair is God's graffiti.

Poetry is eternal graffiti written in the heart of everyone.

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.

This book blew me away. Kelly Parra writes with the keen eye of an artist. Graffiti Girl is warm, gutsy, and true-to-life - an unflinching, honest portrayal of young adults. A seamless and impressive debut.

A tattoo is graffiti on the temple of the body.

I just think that Jack White is the consummate artist - an artist's artist. I'm a huge fan.

I grew up around New York, graffiti culture.

I love graffiti because it enables kids from every social extraction to do something that brings them closer to art, when they normally wouldn't be stimulated to be visually creative. Graffiti helps to develop an awareness of immediate expressive and uncontrolled freedom.

I don't think you have to earn your income as an artist to be an artist. But if you are an artist, then art is what you do, whether or not you're paid for doing it; it is what you do, not what you are. I regard artist not as a description of temperament but as a category of profession, of vocation.

An artist is above all a human being, profoundly human to the core. If the artist can't feel everything that humanity feels, if the artist isn't capable of loving until he forgets himself and sacrifices himself if necessary, if he won't put down his magic brush and head the fight against the oppressor, then he isn't a great artist.

Reinvention is the biggest gift I've been given. I've gone from graffiti artist to jewellery maker, urban musician to conductor.

Law breaking, graffiti artist, dumb jock that I am, I'm pretty socially conscious.

Many people decorate their homes with designer graffiti, even though most of them would probably have real graffiti scoured off the walls of their buildings.

My graffiti really comes more from a May '68, sort of Situationist vibe than the hip-hop world. I think a real graffiti artist would find me a poser.

Judging your early artistic efforts is artist abuse. . . Remember that in order to recover as an artist, you must be willing to be a bad artist. Give yourself permission to be a beginner. By being willing to be a bad artist, you have a chance to be an artist, and perhaps, over time, a very good one

Hip-hop is a competition culture. It's based around, "My DJ is better than you. My graffiti artist is better than you."

All the work I did was to challenge politics, culture, and women's rights. I felt like I really wanted to break out. That's why I wanted to use graffiti. It's more open. I don't need people to come to an exhibition. Graffiti gives a voice to the walls.

Graffiti is linear, and it's done with a pencil, and it's like writing on walls.

In college, all my friends were graffiti writers, but I never wrote graffiti. I wanted to participate and do something cool on the street, so I'd make these portraits of people. I'd isolate them on a white wall, make a silkscreen of it, and do these portraits in bathrooms and all around. That's how I started the Polaroids.

Take two paintings by the same artist, one has a signature and the other doesn't. The signed picture is generally more valuable. The signature is almost graffiti or a tagging system, yet it can become more important than the subject.

You are born an artist or you are not. And you stay an artist, dear, even if your voice is less of a fireworks. The artist is always there.

I didnt start doing graffiti until two years after I got to New York. Jean Michel Basquiat was one of my main inspirations for doing graffiti. For a year I didnt know who Jean Michel was, but I knew his work.

In Afghanistan I was doing street art because it was more open, but when I had a show, only men would come. I said, I'm an artist not only for men, but for women too. So that's why I like graffiti.

As an artist, illustrator, and photographer, most of my daily work was formed around the Art & Entertainment business, which was about packaging ideas that looked like they were crafted as artist ideas. In the distributed products, my artist credit was hidden inside the package of the artist or entertainment personality.

I'm a recording artist, a performing artist and a producing artist. All those things have everything to do with the outcome of my shows. I get myself studying every part of the game and not everyone has the characteristic to do that. In my mind, you need all three to become an artist.

When you are writing for an artist you are trying to get into that artist's point of view. What does that artist want to say? What do they care about? And musically, you want to show off that artist.

The Best of the artist's art, which will one day be in a Museum wall, the Painting that sets the artist apart of all other artist artists.

I never considered myself an artist. I aspire to be an artist, but I never thought I had the depth or substance or gift to be an artist. I do think I have some talent, but it doesn't go as far as being an artist.

Graffiti is beautiful; like a brick in the face of a cop.

When you can't think of anything else, photograph graffiti, nudes, or plants.

I hate graffiti. It's not yours - don't draw on it! Is it that hard to comprehend?

I'm a painter. I was a graffiti artist, and I painted all over the world.

Graffiti is only dangerous in the mind of three types of people; politicians, advertising executives and graffiti writers.

Street art, unlike graffiti, adds to the environment and is a positive experience for the artist and community.

You can go to places in Africa and Asia and find Marley graffiti. In the slums of Nairobi, you see his lyrics painted on walls, and you realise he has this almost religious significance to the underclass of the world. He's a guy born in a hut with no bed, and now he's probably the most listened-to artist in the world. It's fascinating.

It wasn't supposed to work - being a new artist, a female artist, an artist on an independent. That's what made it so much sweeter when we hit No. 1.

A true artist could and should create till the day they die. You don't ever fail as an artist until you quit being an artist.

I started off as a graffiti artist in the South Bronx. My tag name was 'Loco' because I would go crazy and tag anywhere I wanted, in the weirdest places.

Graffiti is one of the few tools you have if you have almost nothing.

Berlin is still a very edgy place, a very cosmopolitan place. It's a place where completely different ideas and cultures come together and clash in a very warm way. In a very warm-hearted way. It's a very young city. It's a vibrant city. It's an exciting city. It's a city that's also scarred by history. I think that's to be celebrated and graffiti is to be celebrated. Graffiti in Berlin is very different than when they spray something on the wall dividing the west bank and Israel. And should be treated as such in Berlin.

Obviously my own work comes from a conceptual art tradition, but I love the graffiti artists, and I feel spiritually closer to them than to most contemporary art; they make the city a free space of diverse voices and we shouldn't get all cynical about them just because Banksy made some money. I collaborate sometimes with Krae, who is an old school east London graffiti writer.

But there's no way round it-commercial success is a mark of failure for a graffiti artist. We're not supposed to be embraced in that way. When you look at how society rewards so many of the wrong people, it's hard not to view financial reimbursement as a badge of self-serving mediocrity.

Graffiti is a pathetic attempt at anonymous recognition.

Traditional graffiti writers have a bunch of rules they like to stick to, and good luck to them, but I didn't become a graffiti artist so I could have somebody else tell me what to do. If you're the type who gets sentimental about people scribbling over your stuff, I suggest graffiti is probably not the right hobby for you.

Bus stops are far more interesting and useful places to have art than in museums. Graffiti has more chance of meaning something or changing stuff than anything indoors. Graffiti has been used to start revolutions, stop wars, and generally is the voice of people who aren't listened to. Graffiti is one of those few tools you have if you have almost nothing. And even if you don't come up with a picture to cure world poverty you can make somebody smile while they're having a piss.

I didn't have much of a life in crime as a graffiti writer.

I'm an artist. Gardening is my graffiti. I grow my art. I use the garden soil like it's a piece of cloth, and the plants and the trees, that's my embellishment for that cloth. You'd be surprised what the soil can do if you let it be your canvas.

I am a serious artist in my own right, in the sense that I've spent my entire life being an artist and trying to be an artist and making work.