Tomorrow I’ll review the book, My Friends, by Fredrik Backman, but first I wanted to capture some of the art quotes from it:

“You can be whatever you want to in life, as long as you don’t become a critic! Not of other people, and not of yourself. It’s so easy to be a critic, any coward can do that. But art doesn’t need critics, art has enemies enough already. Art needs friends…You’re an artist if you create something! You’re an artist if you don’t see the world the way it is, if you hate white wall! No one else decides what art is, no one can stop you loving whatever you like, the cynics and critics can have control of all the other stuff on the planet, but they can’t decide how hard your heart beats! Become whatever you want but don’t become one of them. Art is a fragile enough light as it is. It can’t be blown out by a single sigh. Art needs friends, with our bodies against the wind and our hands cupped around the flame, until it is strong enough to burn with its own power. Until its an inferno. Unstoppable. ”

“Great art is a small break from human despair…”

Ragnar Sandberg: ” Art should be without purpose, and irresistible. You have to paint like the birds sing.”

“No one teaches anyone to paint, all we learn are rules and limitations, what we aren’t supposed to do. I went to art school, but I was lucky, I got thrown out before they had time to teach me anything.”

“Don’t paint the way things look, plaint the way they feel.”

“One of the most beautiful things you can say about art is that it was inevitable. ”

Marcel Duchamp: “Art is completed by the viewer.”