Edward Hopper Quotes

Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world.

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

No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination.

More of me comes out when I improvise.

The only quality that endures in art is a personal vision of the world. Methods are transient: personality is enduring.

I guess I'm not very human. All I really want to do is paint light on the side of a house.

It's (the lack of communication between the people in his paintings, ed.) probably a reflection of my own, if I may say, loneliness. I don't know. It could be the whole human condition.

To me the most important thing is the sense of going on. You know how beautiful things are when you're traveling.

In general it can be said that a nation's art is greatest when it most reflects the character of its people.

There is a sort of elation about sunlight on the upper part of a house.

Well, I've always been interested in approaching a big city in a train, and I can't exactly describe the sensations, but they're entirely human and perhaps have nothing to do with aesthetics.

I have tried to present my sensations in what is the most congenial and impressive form possible to me.

So many people say painting is fun. I don't find it fun at all. It's hard work for me.

Yes, linseed oil. I used to use poppy oil, but I have heard that poppy oil is given to cracking pigment too, so I use it no longer.

The only real influence I've ever had was myself.

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

In its most limited sense, modern, art would seem to concern itself only with the technical innovations of the period.

What I wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house.

The question of the value of nationality in art is perhaps unsolvable.

If the picture needs varnishing later, I allow a restorer to do that, if there's any restoring necessary.

The trend in some of the contemporary movements in art, but by no means all, seems to deny this ideal and to me appears to lead to a purely decorative conception of painting.

Well, I have a very simple method of painting.

I believe that the great painters with their intellect as master have attempted to force this unwilling medium of paint and canvas into a record of their emotions.

After all, we are not French and never can be, and any attempt to be so is to deny our inheritance and to try to impose upon ourselves a character that can be nothing but a veneer upon the surface.

I find linseed oil and white lead the most satisfactory mediums.

If the technical innovations of the Impressionists led merely to a more accurate representation of nature, it was perhaps of not much value in enlarging their powers of expression.

I think that zinc white has a property of scaling and cracking.

I use a retouching varnish which is made in France, Libert, and that's all the varnish I use.

If I had the energy, I would have done it all over the county.

I once got a little camera to use for details of architecture and so forth but the photo was always so different from the perspective the eye gives, I gave it up.

I trust Winsor and Newton and I paint directly upon it.

Painting will have to deal more fully and less obliquely with life and nature's phenomena before it can again become great.

When I don't feel in the mood for painting I go to the movies for a week or more. I go on a regular movie binge!

The only real influence I've ever had is myself.

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