John F. Carlson Quotes
We must have design in a picture even at the expense of truth. You are using nature for your artistic needs.
A picture is a work of art, not because it is 'modern,' nor because it is 'ancient,' but because it is a sincere expression of human feeling.
Reserve is strength; overstatement is weakness. No one cares to hear the singer's topmost notes when the voice is 'nigh onto breaking.
In the anxiety to get beautiful colour harmony do not exhaust all combinations on one canvas.
Too much reality in a picture is always a disappointment to the imaginative soul. We love suggestion and not hard facts.
Clouds are fascinating to paint because they are the only element in a landscape that possesses free movement.
The great paintings are the ones with the most subtle value relationships. The closer you could bring your values and still distinguish between them, the stronger you were as a painter.
Good colour really means good taste; and 'powerful' colour means a reserve, to give a climax its full force, and not 'red, white, and blue all over.
If you're going to paint from photos, make sure you've painted for at least ten years.
We must not imitate the externals of nature with so much fidelity that the picture fails to evoke that wonderful teasing recurrence of emotion that marks the contemplation of a work of art.
It is the ability to determine consciously what it is that interests him, and why, that differentiates the artist from the art student.
Trust your feelings entirely about colour, and then, even if you arrive at no infallible colour theory, you will at least have the credit of having your own colour sense.
Rest assured that if you work every day at your art, using the materials nearest at hand, you will gradually discover such beauty in them that they will fill you with happiness.
The artist himself is often surprised at the finished work of art. He cannot tell 'how it happened', nor could he repeat the feat at someone's bidding.
If you train yourself in memory work, you fearlessly attack and rearrange your material, for you can retain your original impression.
The underlying principles or fundamentals should be so hidden away by the beauty they are eventually to support, that it would require much digging to disclose them.