Best 1313 quotes in «painting quotes» category

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.

In the sphere of natural investigation, as in poetry and painting, the delineation of that which appeals most strongly to the imagination, derives its collective interest from the vivid truthfulness with which the individual features are portrayed.

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

I paint for myself. I don't know how to do anything else, anyway. Also I have to earn my living, and occupy myself.

I paint to evoke a changing language of symbols, a language with which to remark upon the qualities of our mysterious capacities which direct us towards the ultimate reality.

I paint very directly. I go from top to bottom. When I get to the floor, the painting is finished.

I paint my own reality.

I paint the way someone bites his fingernails; for me, painting is a bad habit because I don't know nor can I do anything else.

I paint as I feel like painting; to hell with all their studies.

I painted myself out of my painting.

I prefer you to take as your model a mediocre sculpture rather than an excellent painting, for from painted objects we train our hand only to make a likeness, whereas from sculptures we learn to represent both likeness and correct incidence of light.

I quit painting very early. I just jumped ship. In a way, the window is the tragic possibility - you can jump out into your future. That kind of action is more like a direction. It's that same thinking that brought me to New York.

I rage against Vincent van Gogh for needing to die at 37, after painting for only ten years.

I realized painting could look like a film, and a film like a painting.

I realize that protest paintings are not exactly in vogue, but I've done many.

I really prize and love great painting. It's so out of date now. It's slightly come back in.

I see my studio like a laboratory, where I work like an investigator - it's almost forensic. I love the discovery process in painting.

I see no thread running through my work; I simply get on with my life and my painting.

I should also mention that the Neue Galerie is piping music into the galleries where "Klee and America" is hanging, a practice for which vulgar is not even close to the word. Yes, I like Schumann's Carnaval, but I'm damned if I know why anybody thinks the paintings of Paul Klee profit from being viewed with Carnaval playing in the background.

I seldom have my stuff up unless I'm testing it. If I'm worrying about a painting, I put it up and see if I detest it quickly or slowly. Otherwise I have things by other artists.

I should like to paint like an man who has never seen a painting, but this man -myself - lives in a museum.

I sort of feel that the role of a portrait in society is to represent the sitters, we see paintings of Shakespeare and we believe that it is what he looked like, well maybe a little older, fatter and with a higher hairline. I guess it would be cool if the portraits that were painted really did look like the sitter or expressed some sort of emotion that gave the viewers in the future a sense of the sitter's pathos at the time it was painted.

I sometimes use a lot of light greens and greys when I feel there is sadness in the painting.

I switched to painting with my left hand to be in better company.

I started with straight, basic, symbolic structures. My problem now is the opposite; as I get older, I try to make my paintings more contrapuntal, richer.

I stopped painting in 1990 at the peak of my success just to deny people my beautiful paintings. And I did it out of spite.

I studied shades, textures by painting after the Old Masters, the classical European paintings, as part of my educational process.

I stopped painting, not because I didn't like painting; the sensuality of it was fun. But I wasn't able to get to the point I wanted to.

I still have a lot of pleasure doing them, but as time goes by I come to appreciate more clearly which paintings are good and which should be discarded.

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.

I suppose what you're doing as a painter is making a record of your trip through life. I can't think of any job that is quite as satisfactory as doing a painting.

I think, if one is a painter, all you experience does come out when you’re painting.

It has been difficult to hold onto many paintings but I have retained a few.

I think humor really is the most effective way for me personally to express myself. When I see an incredible formalist painting, I respect it. I really do. I see its history and I get it. But when I pass something weird or something funny, I totally associate with it. I find myself thinking about it later that day. That's how I know something is thought provoking. That's how I know something is effective.

I think half the point of painting a picture is that you don't know what will happen... that if painters did know what was going to happen they wouldn't bother to do it.

I think of [my photographs] as found paintings because I don't crop them, I don't manipulate them or anything. So they're like found objects to me.

I think of painting without subject matter as music without words.

I think not knowing what to think of your paintings is a good place to be.

I think only of my painting, and if I were to drop it, I think I'd go crazy.

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

I think painting has that unique potential to project opposing viewpoints.

I think that the mythology of Van Gogh's life, and the beauty of his paintings, is unstoppable.

I think that painting is a very ancient form of expression.

I thought I was painting in sound a picture of revolution - but I made a mistake, you know. The mistake was that it was anti-revolution.

I think the word "intelligent" dictates a lot about someone's sense of humor, and the terms of reference in your life, the way you interpret something you read or a painting you look at or something.

I think we all ought to be careful about too much generalization on this issue, even as I confess to painting with a pretty broad brush myself!

I think we seem to remember things in still pictures. I never gave up on painting. When they said painting was dead, I just thought, Well, that's all about photography, and photography's not that interesting, and it's changing anyway.

I think we all go through times in our lives when we decide, "I'm going to try something else." I tried filmmaking instead of painting, and I think I enjoyed it more. So I don't paint anymore.

It is not right for painters to think that painting is like prostitution, that 'first you do it for love, then you do it for others, and finally you do it for money.

It is far easier to debate about realistic painting than to paint one.