Painting Quotes

Painting and illustration cannot be mixed—one cannot merge from one into the other.

I want to give my compliments to Australia. Ever since your government paid a few million dollars for a Jackson Pollack painting, I figure that it must be a marvellous country

And I like the idea of change. Because I don't see why we should hang a painting on the wall and then just not think of it anymore because it's there like a piece of furniture.

So when I'm playing, I'm sort of painting a feeling in the air.

American poetry, like American painting, is always personal with an emphasis on the individuality of the poet.

An artist must forget painting when he paints. That's the only way he will do original work.

As for the subject matter in my painting.. ..it is very often an incidental thing in the background, elusive and unclear, that really stirred me.

Flesh was the reason why oil painting was invented

The older painting - well, it does have an effect all at once, I suppose, but it's of a lesser intensity than a lot of the American work in the last ten or fifteen years.

I do what I do out of pure enjoyment. Hopefully, nobody does it better. There's a beauty to making a great deal. It's my canvas. And I like painting it.

In every painting a whole is mysteriously enclosed, a whole life of tortures, doubts, of hours of enthusiasm and inspiration.

Learning the art of painting is not an easy task. It takes a great deal of intelligence, keen analysis, study and practice.

People call me the painter of dancing girls. It has never occurred to them that my chief interest in dancers lies in rendering movement and painting pretty clothes.

When I get my hands on painting materials I don't give a damn about other people's painting... every generation must start again afresh.

I've known painters who never did any good work because instead of painting their models they seduced them.

Don't get me wrong-painting's all right. But now that we have photography, what's the point?

I was totally absorbed. I was in another world, or another dimension; all sense of time evaporated.

Painting transports me into another dimension which, quite literally, refreshes parts of the soul which other activities can't reach.

Whence did the wond'rous mystic art arise, / Of painting SPEECH, and speaking to the eyes? / That we by tracing magic lines are taught, / How to embody, and to colour THOUGHT?

But when I started writing songs, I stopped painting completely, and the only art things I do are connected to the career, like album sleeves and, to some extent, posters and things like that.

Making a record is like painting a school bus with a toothbrush

I'm always looking at the computer. I make all of my work on the computer at some point or another. Almost all of the paintings come from a file.

In my earlier paintings, I wanted the space between the picture plane and the spectator to be active.

The Painter must leave the beholder something to guess.

If you ask me what the world looks like to me, it looks like a painting by Pissarro.

In general, my paintings are multifocal. You can't call it unfocused space, but not being fixed to a single focus is very much of our time.

Painting is, I think, inevitably an archaic activity and one that depends on spiritual values.

What is real for me are the illusions I create with my paintings. Everything else is quicksand.

I have told myself a hundred times that painting - that is, the material thing called a painting - is no more than a pretext, the bridge between the mind of the painter and the mind of the spectator.

Soul is as necessary in a painting as body.

Remember the enemy of all painting is gray: a painting will almost always appear grayer than it is, on account of its oblique position under the light.

Use your blood to paint. Keep painting until you faint. Keep painting until you die.

The best spot painting you can have by me is one painted by Rachel.

Ideas for work are coming to me in abundance...I'm going like a painting-locomotive.

In a movie, you're raw material, just a hue of some color and the director makes the painting.

There is a larger frame to the painting than the one that bounds our life's events.

Poetry is superior to painting in the presentation of words, and painting is superior to poetry in the presentation of facts. For this reason I judge painting to be superior to poetry.

The sign of a masterpiece: A painting when there's a lack of resolution.

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

I want painting to be difficult to do.

Whenever I buy a painting, someone invariably says, "Oh, what a great investment." And I hate that reaction. To me, it's a matter of love and not an exchange of equity.

I was painting sets, working in editorial as an assistant, driving their trucks... lying that I knew how to drive a truck... and doing commercials and documentaries.

Painting cannot be the only activity of a mature artist.

In the middle 1940s... I heard everyone live. Painting, the theater; everything was happening. It was an exciting time when New York was the place to be.

How vain is painting, which is admired for reproducing the likeness of things whose originals are not admired.

If you start painting yourself into a corner, life starts shutting down. There is always hopefully a next.

Polyphonic painting is superior to music in that there, the time element becomes a spatial element. The notion of simultaneity stands out even more richly.

There are certain things in which mediocrity is not to be endured, such as poetry, music, painting, public speaking.

I am trying like Klee, to create something that will have a life of its own, that can put me in real danger, a danger which I willingly take on myself.

Regarding the creative: never assume you're the master, only the student. Your audience will determine if you're masterful.