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Painting Quotes

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Painting Quotes

“You can always tell a great painting, because when you get close there are all these nervous marks.”

Greatness Painting Mark Nervous

Author:Damien Hirst

“I want people to know what it is they're looking at. But at the same time, the closer they get to the painting, it's like going back into childhood. And it's like an abstract piece.. it becomes the landscape of the brush marks rather than just sort of an intellectual landscape.”

People Knows Want Pieces Childhood Painting Intellectual Mark Landscape Abstract Brushes

Author:Jenny Saville

“My ambition is to construct a painting so that the whole of its surface is alive, however I look at it. Each mark, and the interval between each mark must give something back on its own terms.”

Giving Looks Whole Term Alive Painting Ambition Mark Surface Constructs Intervals My Ambition

Author:Andrew Forge

“One of the marks of true genius is a quality of abundance. A rich, rollicking abundance, enough to give indigestion to ordinary people. Great artists turn it out in rolls, in swatches. They cover whole ceilings with paintings, they chip out a mountainside in stone, they write not one novel but a shelf full. It follows that some of their work is better than other. As much as a third of it may be pretty bad. Shall we say this unevenness is the mark of their humanity - of their proud mortality as well as of their immortality?”

Source: The Nature of the Artist: An Address Delivered at the Dedication Ceremonies for Lee Pattison Recital Hall, Wilbur Hall, Mary Kimberly Residence Hall

“But the mark of American merit in painting, in sculpture, in poetry, in fiction, in eloquence, seems to be a certain grace withoutgrandeur, and itself not new but derivative; a vase of fair outline, but empty,--which whoso sees, may fill with what wit and character is in him, but which does not, like the charged cloud, overflow with terrible beauty, and emit lightnings on all beholders.”

Source: Essays and Lectures

“I never know what it's going to look like. Wouldn't be much point in painting if I already knew the outcome. I have a subject in front of me and I start flooding colour and making marks, I don't know, it's improvisation isn't it?”

Ifs Knows Looks Subjects Fronts Painting Mark Outcomes Colour Improvisation Flooding

Author:Peter Wright

“Unlike the marks of a painting, the photo seems to organize its 'opinions' in relation to the world; even when the photographs have clearly been manipulated, the 'opinions' seem to have all the more force, with the suggested 'participation of the world' articulating that 'opinion' as a difference.”

World Seems Force Differences Opinion Painting Mark Relation Photograph Organize Participation Articulating

Author:Joseph Kosuth

“The spirit of a painting is very hard to explain and articulate. I can't say it's not intentional because that is the mark I'm trying to hit, however I don't feel I have much control over it.”

Feels Trying I Can Hard Spirit Painting Mark Over It

Author:Danny Fox

“One of the most recent things we did [in Perceval Press] is a reissue of a fantastic documentary about Russian prison tattoo culture by Alix Lambert called The Mark of Cain. We've done books from Twilight of Empire, that actually has forewords by Howard Zinn and Dennis Kucinich and others, to books of poetry, photography, painting - all kinds of books.”

Kind Book Done Culture Painting Photography Mark Presses Prison All Kinds Fantastic Empires Twilight Tattoo Documentaries Cain

Author:Viggo Mortensen