Painting Quotes

You might as well ask an artist to explain his art, or ask a poet to explain his poem. It defeats the purpose. The meaning is only clear thorough the search.

Painting and writing are solitary arts.

I love Christmas tree bulbs, and I started putting them in my paintings. You've got to plug this painting in, and it's got a rig in the back, so that each one can be replaced if it burns out.

Sometimes I miss out the morning's painting session and instead study my Japanese books in the open.

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

There are different kinds of concentration required to make a painting, different kinds of being present.

Atmosphere in a painting is nine-tenths fear.

Painting is just a tool; it is nothing in itself. What counts is how you do it.

I'm not so interested in the effort that it takes to have a self-promotional outlook. I believe in being quiet and making my work and just trying to make discoveries and let the painting evolve.

I think people have to choose between living with contradictions or painting themselves into a corner. I have a lot of contradictions.

Painting is drawing, with the additional means of color.

I'm not sure that Van Gogh got up in the morning and looked at the crows and the bizarre clouds and went damn that's a good painting, you know? No, he considered shooting himself, and one day he did.

One day, in the San Francisco walk, he came upon some badly painted figures and observed that good painters imitate nature but bad ones vomit it forth.

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.

A painting with a message does not happen by accident. It happens when you place elements in their order of importance.

The theme, or harmony, of a painting can be created by any one of its visual elements. A single colour... repetition of shapes... Light can be a theme.

Put a symbol, or language of some sort, in a painting and it will be noticed by the viewer whether or not they can read that particular language.

What is painting but the act of embracing, by means of art, the surface of the pool?

I suggest that it is the honesty of the attempt to recreate the forms and spaces visually without artistic editing that is one of the hallmarks of realist painting.

Values create dimension, but color usually receives all of the attention. When painting with oils, placing dark and light pigments next to each other can be an accident waiting to happen.

You have to live in a state of thinking your painting is good, or you couldn't do it.

It is what is painted between the outlines that makes the difference between merely competent painting and really meaningful art.

The paintings may communicate even better because people are lazy and they can look at a painting with less effort than they can read a poem.

In Zen brush-painting, the circle is a master's problem. It represents everything and nothing, and in so doing, the universe.

I trust the symbol that is arrived at in the making of the painting. Meaningful symbols aren't invented as such, they are made or discovered as symbol later.

There is something mysterious in this work that I do not ever what to discover.

Painting is like being a lawyer and attacking a corporation.

I'm not interested in painting; I'm not interested in making a picture. Then what the hell am I interested in? I must be interested in this process.

The bathroom door swings open. Emma sees the blood painting my skin and the red rivers carved on my body. Emma sees the wet knife, silver and bone. The screams of my little sister shatter mirrors.

Painting dissolves the forms at its command ... it melts them into color.

I am anxious that the world should be inclined to look to painters for information about painting.

Keep painting - day in - day out. Be absorbed by it.

Photography is painting with light

We must always apologize for talking painting.

I am able to make a contribution... Let me repeat my convictions, I can make a contribution to American painting.

My painting represents the victory of the forces of darkness and peace over the powers of light and evil.

We amuse ourselves painting our prison-walls with bright figures and brilliant landscapes.

At its edges, a painting makes its surrender to reality. The ways in which it can do so are endlessly revealing, as infinite as the potential forms of painting itself.

I feel like I have to avoid certain thrift store-isms, having been known for the thrift store paintings. It's like I have to not paint that way.

Be flexible - the order in which you introduce the elements of a painting should not be a rigid system. What worked last time may not work this time.

People want Art. And they are given it. But the less Art there is in painting the more painting there is.

Elizabeth Peyton, the artist known for tiny, dazzling portraits of radiant youth, is now painting tiny, dazzling portraits of radiant middle age.

Children's finger-painting came under the arts, but movies didn't.

My nervous system is very much weakened - nothing but painting in oil can keep me going.

The Painter's Keys is a timeless, universal guide to lifemanship masquerading as a painting blog.

The edge in modern painting is charged with neurosis; it meets a world that no longer confirms it but which is hostile or at best indifferent.

How do you complete a painting, really? There are paintings by so many different artists that are interesting precisely because they haven't really been completed.

Read in order to write, but paint in order to paint.

You might be a redneck if your favorite Christmas present was a painting on black velvet.

I also paint and enjoy acrylic medium; some of my close friends have paintings I did for them.