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Painting Quotes

Browse 4325 quotes about Painting.

Painting Quotes

“In Holland, everyone is an expert in painting and in tulips.”

Art Artist Painting Experts Holland

Author:Albert Camus

“Women hock their jewels and their husbands' insurance policies to acquire an unaccustomed shade in hair or crêpe de chine. Why then is it that when anyone commits anything novel in the arts he should be always greeted by this same peevish howl of pain and surprise? One is led to suspect that the interest people show in these much talked of commodities, painting, music, and writing, cannot be very deep or very genuine when they so wince under an unexpected impact.”

“In a moment when criticism shows a singular dearth of direction every man has to be a law unto himself in matters of theatre, writing, and painting. While the American Mercury and the new Ford continue to spread a thin varnish of Ritz over the whole United States there is a certain virtue in being unfashionable.”

Source: John Dos Passos: the major nonfictional prose

“He who has learned what is commonly considered the whole art of painting, that is, the art of representing any natural object faithfully, has as yet only learned the language by which his thoughts are to be expressed.”

Art Whole Artist Language Natural Objects Painting Representing

Book:The True and the Beautiful in Nature, Art, Morals, and Religion, Selected from the Works of John Ruskin

Source: The True and the Beautiful in Nature, Art, Morals, and Religion, Selected from the Works of John Ruskin

“But you begin to feel as you go on working that unless painting proves its right to exist by being critical and self-judging, it has no reason to exist at all - or is not even possible. The canvas is a court where the artist is prosecutor, defendant, jury and judge. Art without a trial disappears at a glance.”

Feels Art Self Reason Artist Painting Judging Goes On Prove Court Critical Disappear Trials No Reason Canvas Glances Jury Prove It Prosecutor

Author:Philip Guston

“Art is frightening. Art isn't pretty. Art isn't painting. Art isn't something you hang on the wall. Art is what we do when we're truly alive. An artist is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity, and boldness to challenge the status quo. And an artist takes it (all of it, the work, the process, the feedback from those we seek to connect with) personally.”

Art Use Artist Process Challenges Creativity Alive Painting Wall Art Is Bravery Insight Frightening Status Quo Feedback Boldness Painting Art

Author:Seth Godin

“Sculpture and painting are very justly called liberal arts; a lively and strong imagination, together with a just observation, being absolutely necessary to excel in either; which, in my opinion, is by no means the case of music, though called a liberal art, and now in Italy placed even above the other two--a proof of the decline of that country.”

Mean Art Two Country Together Artist Strong Imagination Music Opinion Cases Painting Musician Proof Observation Decline Sculpture Lively Liberal Arts

Author:Lord Chesterfield

“For the artist, the goal of the painting or musical composition is not to convey literal truth, but an aspect of a universal truth that if successful, will continue to move and to touch people even as contexts, societies and cultures change. For the scientist, the goal of a theory is to convey "truth for now"--to replace an old truth, while accepting that someday this theory, too, will be replaced by a new "truth," because that is the way science advances.”

“Painting seems to be to the eye what dancing is to the limbs. When that has educated the frame to self-possession, to nimbleness,to grace, the steps of the dancing-master are better forgotten; so painting teaches me the splendor of color and the expression of form, and as I see many pictures and higher genius in the art, I see the boundless opulence of the pencil, the indifferency in which the artist stands free to choose out of the possible forms.”

Source: The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Western artists stand as humans looking at nature; Asian artists try to be in nature. You become one with nature rather than painting a portrait of it. That's a big shift.”

Trying Humans Bigs Artist Painting Western Portraits Asian One With Nature

Author:Brice Marden

“This is the birth of the modern human soul. The artists are like us, not like the Neanderthals, who had no culture - and who incidentally were still roaming the landscape at the time the paintings were made. It is striking that there is a distant cultural echo that seems to reach all the way down to us, over dozens of millennia.”

Way Humans Made Stills Soul Seems Artist Culture Modern Painting Birth Made It Landscape Dozen Echoes Human Soul Roaming Neanderthals

Author:Werner Herzog

“The paintings are not just on flat walls - you have these enormous niches, bulges and protrusions, as well as stalactites and stalagmites. The effect of the three-dimensionality is phenomenal. It's a real drama which the artists of the time understood, and they used it for the drama of their paintings.”

Wells Real Used Artist Three Effects Painting Wall Drama Understood Enormous Flats Niche Phenomenal

Author:Werner Herzog

“From since I could remember I've always been an artist, drawing, painting and so forth. I would also always draw made up rock n' roll characters in a band who each had their own style and personalities. I think by accident I was already becoming a fashion designer.”

Thinking Made Character Remember Artist Rocks Fashion Style Painting Personality Becoming Band Draws Accidents Drawing Designer Rock N Roll Fashion Designer

Author:Ashley Purdy

“I'm not a political artist in any way, but if an idea takes me somewhere or something is emotionally impactful, I find a way to make a painting that encapsulates it.”

Ifs Way Ideas Political Artist Painting Take Me

Author:Idris Khan

“Sometimes I think I shouldn't explain much about my work because people will just feel what they feel when they see it. They'll love it or hate it or enjoy it on their own, like how I've looked at abstract paintings of other artists and cried or felt happy because I've felt, "Wow, I've lived that, I've understood that."”

People Thinking Feels Sometimes Artist Hate Felt Enjoy Painting Understood Abstract Wow Cried Abstract Painting

Author:Jose Parla

“I spent much of my college life prepping for other careers, but I was always drawing and painting whenever I had free time. Eventually, thanks to the internet, I started noticing that there were such things as art schools, and professional artists, and people making a living doing a variety of types of art.”

People Art School Artist Careers College Painting Type Internet Drawing Thanks Variety Noticing Art School Free Time College Life Making A Living Drawing And Painting

Author:Julie Dillon

“My first sense of myself was as an artist, a painter. I would see a Van Gogh painting and just love it, the more emotional and passionate the more it attracted me.”

Firsts Artist Emotional Painting Passionate Painter Vans

Author:Philip Schultz

“We're painting the same people all our life - it's just the way we look at them that changes. If you experience trauma, you can speak about it in so many different ways. You can speak about landscape, you can speak about your food; it's always different. Trauma is the beginning of life as an artist.”

People Ifs Way Looks Different Artist Speak Our Lives Painting Trauma Landscape Different Ways Beginning Of Life

Author:Christian Boltanski

“A lot of artists were members of the artistic union. It gave you the possibility to buy paints, canvases, brushes, even the possibility to get a studio if you had the money to build it. It also gave you the possibility to make your living by making official art and then you would get a lot of "official" commissions: portraits, paintings, murals, etc.”

Ifs Art Artist Possibility Painting Members Unions Paint Studios Artistic Officials Etc Portraits Brushes Mural

Author:Ilya Kabakov

“It's hard for me to say what would happen if I didn't go to art school. It wasn't that I learned any specific painting or drafting skills at school that I felt I couldn't have taught myself. However there is something quintessentially unique and important that you gain by immersing yourself in ascholastic and creative universe, and being held to certain academic standards while being surrounded by artists of varying disciplines.”

“I realized that most people waste their lives earning a living, and I wanted to live. I love painting, so I keep painting. That's how I became an artist.”

People Wanted Artist Painting Waste I Realized Earning Earning A Living

Author:Pierre Soulages

“You collect art: you must know that the miniature artists, at the end of careers spent painting the tiniest, most exacting details that no one would ever look at, would often put their eyes out with needles. Too much beauty, yes, but also too much seeing. They were tired of seeing. The dark was safe and warm and comfortable. Blindness was a gift. I still have seeing to do.”

Knows Looks Art Stills Ends Eye Artist Dark Careers Too Much Seeing Painting Safe Comfortable Tired Details Warm Blindness Needles Miniatures

Author:Ian McDonald

“I have been surrounded by artists and paintings throughout my life. My father Ted Dyer is an artist, and from a very early age I have spent time painting and drawing.”

Has Beens Age Artist Father Painting Drawing Painting And Drawing

Author:John Dyer

“You see, painting has now become, or all art has now become completely a game, by which man distracts himself. What is fascinating actually is, that it's going to become much more difficult for the artist, because he must really deepen the game to become any good at all.”

Men Art Artist Games Difficult Painting Fascinating Really Deep

Author:Francis Bacon

“My father is a well known artist, Ted Dyer, who has been painting for many years. Our work is very different, but growing up surrounded by paintings, paints, easels and art books does have an effect.”

Years Wells Doe Has Beens Art Book Different Artist Father Known Growing Up Growing Effects Painting Paint Well Known

Author:John Dyer

“Very few people have a natural feeling for painting, and so, of course, they naturally think that painting is an expression of the artist's mood. But it rarely is. Very often he may be in greatest despair and be painting his happiest paintings.”

People Thinking May Feelings Artist Courses Natural Emotion Painting Expression Despair Mood Natural Feelings

Author:Francis Bacon

“Unfinished paintings are more admired than the finished because the artist's actual thoughts are left visible.”

Artist Left Painting Finished Visible Finishing Unfinished

Author:Pliny the Younger

“To me, the art of cinema is the same as the art of painting. The artist takes a 2D medium and gives you the illusion of depth. If you look at any of the great paintings, you have the illusion of depth. Which is part of the art. The same with the great movies.”

Ifs Giving Looks Art Artist Painting Illusion Depth Mediums Cinema

Author:William Friedkin

“Take two paintings by the same artist, one has a signature and the other doesn't. The signed picture is generally more valuable. The signature is almost graffiti or a tagging system, yet it can become more important than the subject.”

Two Important Artist Subjects Painting Valuable Signatures Graffiti

Author:Gavin Turk

“The artist has the power to signoff the work by deconstructing the work itself: I've finished this work now and I'll sign it and relegate the painting to simply something that services my signature. The painting becomes the colorful backdrop of the signature.”

Artist Painting Finished Colorful Signatures Backdrop

Author:Gavin Turk

“It's three disparate elements: the stop sign, the stage paintings, and the skeleton paintings. Those are three sharp ideas, although none of them are necessarily good ideas. Tons of artists have made whole careers out of those three ideas.”

Made Ideas Whole Artist Three Careers Stage Painting Elements Good Ideas Skeletons

Author:Josh Smith

“You can't paint pictures of love. You can only imagine them. So I suppose I don't need a painting by another artist. I have enough of my own.”

Needs Enough Artist My Own Imagine Love You Painting Paint Love Picture

Author:Wolfgang Beltracchi

“I didn't grow up in a naked household, but nudity was not a taboo thing. My mother was an artist and there were naked sculptures and paintings all over the place.”

Mother Artist Grows Growing Up Painting Naked Household Sculpture Taboo Nudity

Author:Ingrid Michaelson

“Does it bother me that some people are burning their own System CDs and taking money out of my pocket? Not really. This has always been about putting the best possible version of the song in the fans hands. It was like selling an artist's painting before he had finished it.”

People Doe Hands Artist Song Fans Painting Finished Versions Selling Burning Bother Pockets Cds

Author:Daron Malakian

“As a child growing up among artists I learned to think of a picture not as a finished product exposed for the admiration of the virtuosi, but as the visible record, lying about the house, of an attempt to solve a definite problem in painting.”

Thinking Children Problem Lying Artist House Growing Up Records Growing Painting Products Solve Finished Visible Admiration Exposed Definite Children Growing Up Growing Children

Author:Robin G. Collingwood

“I would advise puppeteering for any artist. It's a way to break down pretensions. It's a sculpture that can talk. It's a painting that can talk. And it's pure play. I think every artist needs to stay in touch with the idea of playing. The artist should always be playing, always. All art is performance.”

Thinking Way Needs Should Art Ideas Play Artist Break Painting Pure Art Is Performances Breaking Down Sculpture Advise Pretension

Author:Wayne White

“To my way of thinking, the concept drawings that Rembrandt did, the drawings he made that he used to model his artists, to work out the compositions of his paintings: those are cartoons. Look at his sketch for the return of the prodigal son. The expression on the angry younger brother's face. The head is down; the eyebrow is just one curved line over the eyes. It communicates in a very shorthand way. It's beautiful, expressive, and, in a peculiar way, it's more powerful than the kind of stilted, formalized expression in the final painting.”

“It was never my goal to capitalize on punk. I could never make it as a commercial artist. I didn't back then and I still don't have the temperament and don't care for drawing or painting or making art for any other purposes other my own.”

Art Stills Care Purpose Artist Goal My Own Painting Don't Care Drawing Punk Temperament

Author:Raymond Pettibon

“I'm not one of those artists having people there lying around on their paintings, you know, like Hockney or whoever.”

People Knows Lying Artist Painting

Author:Peter Doig

“If you could say it in words there would be no reason to paint.”

Source: Edward Hopper: The Life of an Artist

“My aim in painting has always been the most exact transcription possible of my most intimate impression of nature.”

Artist Painting Aim Impression Intimate Transcription

Book:Edward Hopper, 1882-1967: Hayward Gallery, London, 11 February to 29 March 1981 : a selection from the exhibition Edward Hopper, the art and the artist held at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York from 16 September 1980 to 25 January 1981

Source: Edward Hopper, 1882-1967: Hayward Gallery, London, 11 February to 29 March 1981 : a selection from the exhibition Edward Hopper, the art and the artist held at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York from 16 September 1980 to 25 January 1981

“When I was first painting the Monopoly guy I received a criticism. People said, "You're just painting cartoon characters, anyone can do that," but I'm actually a very skilled artist. That's why I released a Jack Nicholson portrait right after that that was very detailed in the face to show my skills.”

People Firsts Said Character Shows Faces Artist Guy Can Do Painting Skills Criticism Portraits Cartoon Monopoly Nicholson Cartoon Character

Author:Alec Monopoly

“The Best of the artist's art, which will one day be in a Museum wall, the Painting that sets the artist apart of all other artist artists.”

Art Artist Painting Wall One Day Museums

Author:Kelly Miller

“I attended the High School of Industrial Arts and studied with many great artists as painting is something that you never stop learning about. Actually, in high school there was a time that I was thinking about just concentrating on painting and I asked my music teacher, Mr. Sondberg, for advice and he encouraged me to stick with the music as well. So all my life I have been singing and painting.”

Thinking Wells Has Beens Art School Artist Teacher Advice Painting Singing High School Sticks Great Art Great Artist Concentrating Never Stop Learning Music Teacher

Author:Tony Bennett

“A painting is above all a product of the artist's imagination, it must never be a copy. If, at a later stage, he wants to add two or three touches from nature, of course it doesn't spoil anything.”

Ifs Want Two Artist Three Courses Imagination Stage Painting Products Add Copies Spoil

Book:Degas by Degas

Source: Degas by Degas

“I'll bet there are a lot of artists that nobody hears about who just make more money than anybody. The people that do all the sculptures and paintings for big building construction. We never hear about them, but they make more money than anybody.”

People Bigs Artist Building Painting Construction More Money Sculpture

Book:Andy Warhol: the late work

Source: Andy Warhol: the late work

“In the interests of everyone the artist had a responsibility to use his medium well. In the Tibetan culture, most of the paintings are of deities or Buddhas, and they try to send a message of the value of the spiritual.”

Trying Wells Use Spiritual Artist Values Culture Interest Responsibility Painting Messages Mediums Deities Tibetan

Author:Dalai Lama

“Girls seemed to like artists! I felt very drawn to the idea of power, really, and doing painting as a power trip, in a sense. This idea of power has always driven me.”

Ideas Artist Girl Felt Painting Driven Power Trip

Author:Malcolm Morley

“What makes someone an artist? I don't think is has anything to do with a paintbrush. There are painters who follow the numbers, or paint billboards, or work in a small village in China, painting reproductions. These folks, while swell people, aren't artists. On the other hand, Charlie Chaplin was an artist, beyond a doubt. So is Jonathan Ive, who designed the iPod. You can be an artist who works with oil paints or marble, sure. But there are artists who work with numbers, business models, and customer conversations. Art is about intent and communication, not substances.”

“Scott has to be one of the most talented artists I've ever seen. He really captures his subjects in a unique way. He is extremely generous as well. How many artists are willing to donate some of their best works to charity? The Texas Sports Hall of Fame has benefited greatly from Medlock's donated paintings, which are the cornerstones of our auction!”

Way Wells Artist Sports Subjects Willing Painting Fame Unique Charity Generous Halls Texas Capture Best Work Cornerstones Hall Of Fame Donate Auctions

Author:Bob Lilly