Best Painting Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“Knowing what paint a painter uses or having an understanding of where he was in the history of where he came from doesn't hurt your appreciation of the painting.”

Use Understanding Hurt Knowing Painting Paint Appreciation Painter

Author:Jodie Foster

“It all has to do with art - writing, painting, things I’ve done for a long time but just never had enough time to pursue. I have poetry - things that are designed for songs, but they’re always poems first.”

Writing Firsts Long Art Done Enough Song Painting Long Time Pursue Enough Time Had Enough

Author:Jason Newsted

“It has been difficult to hold onto many paintings but I have retained a few. Possibly the current favorite is titled 'Big Band' completed in 2005. It measures 13 feet x 9 feet. It has 18 nearly life size recognizable portraits of the biggest jazz stars that I knew and saw perform in the 1950s, '60s, '70s, '80s and includes Wynton Marsalis.”

Has Beens Bigs Stars Difficult Saws Feet Painting Band Jazz Size Currents Portraits 80s Life Size

Author:LeRoy Neiman

“My lovely wife Janet has been in a few paintings. She is basically a reserved woman who has never sought the limelight. She has always been there throughout my career and continues to be at my side.”

Has Beens Sides Careers Wife Painting Models Lovely Reserved Limelight Lovely Wife

Author:LeRoy Neiman

“Working on 'Raising Hope' is a very hurry-up-and-wait activity, and I just always liked the idea of being as productive as I can be. I write because I don't just want that time to dissolve, where I'm sitting in a trailer staring blankly at the paintings of moccasins that came with the trailer.”

Want Writing I Can Ideas Waiting Painting Activity Sitting Staring Productive Trailers Hurry Up And Wait

Author:Lucas Neff

“When I left the Royal College, I decided I would only make paintings that I would want to look at myself, that felt close to my life.”

Want Looks Left Felt College Painting Decided Royal

Author:Chris Ofili

“When I was painting in art school - and I think many painters in the 1980s worked similarly - a finished painting would often be constructed from lots of other paintings underneath. Some of these individual layers of painting were better than others, but that was something that you would often only realise retrospectively.”

Thinking Art School Individual Painting Finished Painter Realising Layers Often Is Art School

Author:Chris Ofili

“Painting is a hobby for me.”

Painting Hobbies

Author:Renee O'Connor

“Sitting in the Oval Office, beneath a painting of George Washington, with a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. over his right shoulder and a bust of Abraham Lincoln over his left shoulder, Obama told 'National Journal' that the country's economic woes are deep and endemic.”

Country Left Economic Painting Kings Office Sitting Shoulders Journal Woe Luther Abraham Oval

Author:Ron Fournier

“Certainly one of the surprising truths of having a book published is realizing that your book is as open to interpretation as an abstract painting. People bring their own beliefs and attitudes to your work, which is thrilling and surprising at the same time.”

People Book Belief Realizing Attitude Painting Abstract Interpretation Surprising Thrilling Abstract Painting

Author:Marisha Pessl

“I wasn't interested in going to the school dances. I wasn't interested in going to the football games. What I wanted was to be in my room painting my walls and doing weird stuff. That's what I wanted and I got to do what I wanted, so that, to me, is my high school experience.”

Wanted School Games Stuff Rooms Football Painting Wall High School Football Game Weird Stuff School Experience

Author:Brie Larson

“I want to make beautiful paintings. But I don't make beautiful paintings by putting beautiful paint on a canvas with a beautiful motif. It just doesn't work. I expect my paintings to be strong and surprising.”

Want Beautiful Strong Painting Paint Surprising Canvas Motifs Beautiful Paintings

Author:Albert Oehlen

“If someone stands in front of one of my paintings and says, 'This is just a mess', the word 'just' is not so good, but 'mess' might be right. Why not a mess? If it makes you say, 'Wow, I've never seen anything like that', that's beautiful.”

Ifs Might Beautiful Fronts Painting Mess Why Not Wow Might Is Right

Author:Albert Oehlen

“If you create something, whether it's a painting or a company, I think if you care about it, you have some obligation to go out and tell people about it.”

People Ifs Thinking Care Company Painting Obligation If You Care

Author:Daniel H. Pink

“I never consciously said, 'I want to be an actor.' It sounds stupid, but it's kind of like being a painter or something. You don't say, 'From today on I'm going to be a painter.' It's not something conscious - you've just been painting pictures all your life.”

Want Kind Said Today Actors Sound Stupid Painting Conscious Painter Painting A Picture

Author:Franka Potente

“A movie is painting, it's photography, it's literature - because you have to have the screenplay - it's music. Put a different soundtrack to a comedy and it's a tragedy. A movie combines all those forms and forces you to pay attention for two hours with a group of people.”

People Two Different Form Literature Force Hours Pay Attention Comedy Groups Painting Photography Tragedy Pay Attention Screenplays Soundtracks

Author:Paula Patton

“When you're on a highway, viewing the western U.S. with the mountains and the flatness and the desert and all that, it's very much like my paintings.”

Painting Mountain Western Desert Highways Flatness

Author:Edward Ruscha

“I barely knew I wanted to be an artist. I liked my art classes and painting was fun, I guess, but I didn't realize that seeing the country was going to inspire me to further explore that... but that's what it did.”

Art Country Wanted Artist Fun Realizing Class Seeing Inspire Painting Art Class

Author:Edward Ruscha

“I have friends come over and we read plays out loud and I make paintings and I just do things all the time just so I don't ever feel like I'm sitting around.”

Feels Play Painting Sitting Loud Sitting Around

Author:Nikki Reed

“One learns about painting by looking at and imitating other painters.”

Painting Painter Imitation Imitating Imitating Others

Author:Frank Stella

“But, after all, the aim of art is to create space - space that is not compromised by decoration or illustration, space within which the subjects of painting can live.”

Art Space Subjects Painting Art Is Aim Illustration Decoration

Book:Working Space

Source: Working Space

“When I'm painting the picture, I'm really painting a picture. I may have a flat-footed technique, or something like that, but still, to me, the thrill, or the meat of the thing, is the actual painting. I don't get any thrill out of laying it out.”

May Stills Painting Technique Meat Flats Thrill Painting A Picture

Book:Black paintings

Source: Black paintings

“Painting, sculpture and architecture are finished, but the art habit continues.”

Art Painting Habit Finished Architecture Sculpture

Book:Robert Smithson, the Collected Writings

Source: Robert Smithson, the Collected Writings

“I needed an outlet in high school and came across painting. I've actually been painting longer than I've been acting. A movie is a collaborative effort, and with painting you just have yourself.”

School Effort Acting Painting Needed High School Outlets Collaborative Effort

Author:James Franco

“I don't like getting out when I could be painting. And when I'm painting, I don't want anybody else around.”

Want Painting

Author:Don Van Vliet

“No one blames themselves if they don't understand a cartoon, as they might with a painting or "real" art; they simply think it's a bad cartoon.”

Ifs Thinking Art Real Might Painting Blame Cartoon

Author:Chris Ware

“For me, my 20s were all about reaching for the brass ring of work in theater, television, and film, surviving in between by waiting tables, painting houses, serving coffee, and temping.”

Film House Waiting Television Painting Theater Tables Coffee Rings Reaching Serving Surviving Brass Waiting Tables

Author:Kate Walsh

“For me, acting is about the art of it and it's about being on a film set and doing your thing, painting a blank canvas.”

Art Film Acting Painting Blank Canvas Film Set Blank Canvas

Author:Shailene Woodley

“Even though artists of all kinds claim to put their hearts and souls into their works, it will only confuse you, for example, if you try to discern a painter by his paintings. His masterpiece may be the master because of its iridescence; it may display a hundred different perspectives through his single face.”

Ifs Trying Heart Kind May Different Soul Faces Artist Example Painting Masters Perspective Hundred Claims All Kinds Painter Working It Display Masterpiece Heart And Soul Different Perspective

Book:Killosophy

Source: Killosophy

“I used to split my time between writing, music and painting. I would work on a book and then abandon it, start a band, do an album, quit music, then do a gallery show. Eventually I decided to give writing a serious shot.”

Giving Writing Book Shows Used Painting Serious Band Shots Decided Albums Quitting My Time Abandon Splits Gallery Writing Music

Author:Isaac Marion

“People look at film in a gallery, and if they walk out after two minutes they know they haven't seen the whole work. But then people look at a painting for two minutes and think they've seen it. Certain paintings are made to be consumed fast. But some require a slowed-down time. You have to go back to them.”

People Ifs Thinking Knows Looks Made Two Whole Film Certain Walks Minutes Havens Painting Consumed Gallery Down Time

Author:Julie Mehretu

“I went to a school in N.Y. that is conceptual and interdisciplinary and modeled after Cal Arts. It is not just painting or sculpture; it was everything mixed together.”

Art School Together Painting Sculpture Interdisciplinary

Author:Thomas McDonell

“There's plenty of stuff that I don't feel dissident about: I really like tea, I don't have any problem with that. I like lots of paintings.”

Feels Problem Stuff Painting Plenty Tea Dissidents

Author:China Mieville

“When I was growing up, I wanted to be a house painter like my father, but I was always screwing up when I went to work with him. I had a talent for knocking over paint and painting myself into corners. I also realized fairly quickly that painting bored me.”

Wanted Father House Growing Up Growing Talent Painting Paint Corners Painter Bored Knocking

Author:Markus Zusak

“I think we all look for clues that we are not utterly alone... Clues we find in literature and paintings and music and even someone’s eyes; clues that demonstrate that someone else has felt the same indescribable feelings, seen the same things or passed by the spot even if it was by candlelight three hundred years ago. It means everything, like finding footprints in the sand of a deserted island.”

Source: Losing Julia

“I love the trick of painting. You can have the movement within the still thing, but it is completely fixed. And that illusion is constantly exciting.”

Stills Movement Painting Illusion Exciting Tricks Fixed

Author:Cecily Brown

“What we hope for from the artist is help in discovering the significance of a place. In this sense we would choose in most respects for thirty minutes with Edward Hopper’s painting Sunday Morning to thirty minutes on the street that was his subject; with Hopper’s vision we see more.”

Helping Artist Vision Morning Streets Minutes Subjects Painting Photographer Thirty Sunday Significance Discovering Sunday Morning

Author:Robert Adams

“In Utero is a testament to the artistic vision of Kurt Cobain. It's kind of a weird record, and it's strangely beautiful at the same time. And if you look at Kurt's paintings and his drawings - he even did a sculpture for me - it's a rising, tortured-spirit person. It's kind of weird. It's done well, but it's like what Dave was saying about having your own sound. Kurt was a great songwriter. He knew he had a good ear for a hook [and was] a great singer, great guitar player, and In Utero is a good representation of what he liked in art and how he expressed himself.”

“I find I can't get rid of my trashiness as an artist. A lot of my themes in painting, to the extent that there are intentional themes, are meant to bring that conundrum into high relief.”

I Can Artist Painting Theme Relief Conundrums

Author:John Currin

“I want to fall in love with beautiful women of all races. Rescue somebody every now and then, improve my painting, and improve my sentence structure. If I can make a living doing that stuff, that's great, and I will keep doing it, and they can do whatever they want with my image. I couldn't care less.”

“I never really separated painting and literature.”

Literature Painting

Author:Cy Twombly

“If I had been around when Rubens was painting, I would have been revered as a fabulous model. Kate Moss? Well, she would have been the paintbrush.”

Ifs Wells Has Beens Painting Models Fats Fabulous Kate Moss Paintbrush Rubens

Author:Dawn French

“All painting worth its name, unless one is talking about black and white, must include the idea of color as one of its necessary supports, in the same way that it includes chiaroscuro, proportion, and perspective.”

Way Ideas Names Black White Talking Support Color Painting Perspective Proportion Black And White Worth It Chiaroscuro

Author:Eugene Delacroix

“In effect, painting is the still memory of [the artist's] human motion, and our individual responses to it depend on who we are, on our character, which underlines the simple truth that no person leaves himself behind in order to look at a painting.”

Humans Looks Persons Stills Character Artist Order Individual Memories Simple Behinds Effects Painting Depends Response Who We Are Simple Truths

Book:Mysteries of the Rectangle: Essays on Painting

Source: Mysteries of the Rectangle: Essays on Painting

“My idea of a perfect surrealist painting is one in which every detail is perfectly realistic, yet filled with a surrealistic, dreamlike mood. And the viewer himself can't understand why that mood exists, because there are no dripping watches or grotesque shapes as reference points. That is what I'm after: that mood which is apart from everyday life, the type of mood that one experiences at very special moments.”

Ideas Moments Perfect Watches Special Painting Type Shapes Filled Everyday Details Mood Realistic Everyday Life Viewers Surrealism Grotesque Dripping Surrealist Special Moments

Author:Ian Hornak

“What I so like about Poussin and Cezanne is their sense of organization. Ilike the way in which they develop space and shape in architecturalcontinuity - the rhythm across their paintings. When I paint a landscape, Iget the greatest pleasure out of composing it. As I paint, I try to work outa visual sonata form or a fugue, with realistic images.”

Way Trying Form Space Pleasure Painting Shapes Organization Paint Work Out Rhythm Landscape Visuals Realistic Composing Greatest Pleasures Fugue Sonatas Cezanne

Author:Ian Hornak

“There's something of a painting of a woman that represents all women - and by extension, all of humanity - that I just find very exciting. It's a nice distillation, I think, of what it means to be alive.”

Thinking Mean Humanity Nice Alive Painting Exciting Extensions Distillation

Author:Will Cotton

“When I first started painting candyland imagery, I was looking for the best possible metaphor for everything that is pleasure, desire and insatiability.”

Firsts Desire Pleasure Painting Metaphor Imagery

Author:Will Cotton

“A poet can feel free, in my estimation, to write a poem for himself. Or a painter can paint a painting for himself. You can write a short story for yourself. But for me, comedy by its nature is communal. If other people don't get it, I'm not sure why you are doing it.”

People Ifs Feels Writing Stories Comedy Painting Poet Paint Painter Not Sure Short Story Estimation

Author:Keegan-Michael Key

“Man is driven to create; I know I really love to create things. And while I'm not good at painting, drawing, or music, I can write software.”

Knows Men Writing I Can Painting Driven Drawing Software

Author:Yukihiro Matsumoto

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