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Quote by James Elkins

“Painters love paint itself: so much that they spend years trying to get paint to behave the way they want it to.”

Quote by James Elkins

Book:What Painting Is

Work

What Painting Is

This book delves into the fundamental aspects of painting, examining its techniques, history, and aesthetic principles. more

Author

James Elkins is a renowned art critic born in 1955. His work spans a wide range of fields from modern art to contemporary art, known for his profound analysis and unique insights. more

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“Water and stones. Those are the unpromising ingredients of two very different endeavors... painting, because artists' pigments are made from fluids... mixed together with powdered stones to give color... and the other is alchemy, the stone the ultimate goal.”

Giving Made Two Different Together Artist Goal Water Color Painting Materials Stones Ultimate Ingredients Endeavor Fluid Alchemy Ultimate Goal Pigment

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“Every meaning is a projection of the viewer's inarticulate moods.”

Mood Viewers Projection Inarticulate

Book:What Painting Is

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“A painter knows what to do by the tug of the brush as it pulls through a mixture of oils, and by the look of coloured slurries on the palette.”

Knows Looks Oil Painter Brushes Mixtures Methodology Palette

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“Substances are like mirrors that let us see things about ourselves that we cannot quite understand.”

Mirrors Substance

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“It is as if only irrelevance can be promoted as art.”

Ifs Art Modernism Irrelevance

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“Modern paintings often seem to have been made quickly, by comparison with the paintings of earlier centuries, and that seems to give us the license to look at them quickly - to consume them and move on.”

Giving Looks Has Beens Made Seems Moving Modern Century Painting Comparison License Modernism

Author:James Elkins

“At concerts, for me, the orchestra was like a painter. It flooded me with all the colours of the rainbow. If the violin came in by itself, I was suddenly filled with gold and fire, and with red so bright I could not remember having seen it on any object.”

Ifs Remember Music Fire Objects Red Gold Filled Painter Colour Concerts Rainbow Orchestra Violin

Author:James Elkins

“As the decades go by, a painter's life becomes a life lived with oil paint, a story told in the thicknesses of oil. Any history of painting that does not take that obsession seriously is incomplete.”

Doe Stories Painting Paint Oil Decades Obsession Painter Incomplete Thickness

Book:What Painting Is

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“To a nonpainter, oil paint is uninteresting and faintly unpleasant. To a painter, it is the life's blood: a substance so utterly entrancing, infuriating, and ravishingly beautiful that it makes it worthwhile to go back into the studio every morning, year after year, for an entire lifetime.”

Years Beautiful Morning Blood Lifetime Paint Studios Oil Painter Substance Worthwhile Every Morning Infuriating

Book:What Painting Is

Source: What Painting Is

“The muddy moods of oil paints are the painter's muddy humors, and its brilliant transformations are the painter's unexpected discoveries.”

Discovery Transformation Paint Oil Brilliant Mood Painter Unexpected Muddy

Book:What Painting Is

Source: What Painting Is