Art pages are like little side galleries of the heart — places to remember that color, line, and sound can reshape how we see the world. As playwright Jean Anouilh reminds us, “The object of art is to give life shape.” And sometimes that shape arrives on wings, like the way John James Audubon listened to the sky: “Mocking Bird regularly resorts to the south angle of a chimney top and salutes us with sweetest notes from the rising of the moon until about midnight.”

Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere. ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection. ~ Michelangelo

The task of the artist at any time is uncompromisingly simple—to discover what has not yet been done, and to do it. ~ Craig Raine

Art is man’s nature. Nature is God’s art. ~ James Bailey

In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. ~ Raymond Chandler

Music and art and poetry attune the soul to God. ~ Thomas Merton

Art must take reality by surprise. ~ Françoise Sagan

All artists are two-headed calves. ~ Truman Capote

The better the artist, the more vulnerable he seems to be. ~ Al Alvarez

I am following nature without being able to grasp her… I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers. ~ Claude Monet

I cannot see that art is anything less than a way of making joys perpetual. ~ Rebecca West

Through art and art only we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence. ~ Oscar Wilde

Painting is the grandchild of nature. It is related to God. ~ Rembrandt

The secret of life is in art. ~ Oscar Wilde

Being an artist means ceasing to take seriously that very serious person we are when we are not an artist. ~ José Ortega y Gasset