Creativity Quote by Ben Nicholson

"I'm not an expert, but I want to be" is the kind of modesty that doesn’t actually bow; it leans forward. Coming from Ben Nicholson, a modernist painter who spent his life refining abstraction into something quietly rigorous, the line reads less like insecurity and more like a manifesto for apprenticeship as a permanent condition. The first clause disarms: it rejects the grandstanding certainty that often clings to art-world authority. The second clause immediately reasserts ambition, but an ambition directed at craft rather than acclaim.

The subtext is a challenge to the myth of the inspired genius. Nicholson’s generation watched modern art harden into schools, dogmas, and gatekeepers, where “expertise” could mean the right vocabulary as much as the right eye. By admitting he isn’t there yet, he sidesteps the performance of mastery; by insisting he wants to be, he refuses the romantic alibi that art is pure instinct. It’s desire pointed at discipline.

Intent matters here: Nicholson isn’t pleading for permission. He’s naming the engine of his practice: attention, repetition, revision. Expertise becomes not a credential but a horizon, something you approach by doing the work, failing in public, and letting the work teach you what you still don’t know.

That tension - humility with teeth - is why the line lands now, in a culture that confuses confidence for competence. Nicholson offers a better stance: unembarrassed aspiration without the costume of certainty.