Popular quotes about Colour! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 11
The prejudice many photographers have against colour photography comes from not thinking of colour as form. You can say things with colour that can't be said in black and white... Those who say that colour will eventually replace black and white are talking nonsense. The two do not compete with each other. They are different means to different ends.
Edward WestonSometimes I can see colour without opening my eyes. I saw that Billy's heart was no colour and every colour. Like water or diamonds or crystals, it's pure and reflects the light.
Glenda MillardWherever men are noble, they love bright colour; and wherever they can live healthily, bright colour is given themโin sky, sea, flowers, and living creatures.
John RuskinThe sky is no longer out there, but it is right on the edge of the space you are in. The sense of colour is generated inside you. If you then go outside you will see a different coloured sky. You colour the sky.
James TurrellI don't want any colour to be noticeable... I don't want it to operate in the modernist sense as colour, something independent... Full, saturated colours have an emotional significance I want to avoid.
Lucian FreudColour is uncontainable. It effortlessly reveals the limits of language and evades our best attempts to impose a rational order on it To work with colour is to become acutely aware of the insufficiency of language and theory โ which is both disturbing and pleasurable.
David Batchelor[Malcolm Fraser] went straight from Melbourne Grammar to Oxford. And he would have been a very lonely person, and I think he probably met a lot of black students there who were also probably lonely. I think he formed friendships with them, which established his judgement about the question of colour. Thatโs my theory. I donโt know whether itโs right or not, but thatโs what I always respected about Malcolm. He was absolutely, totally impeccable on the question of race and colour.
Bob HawkeWe see in colour all the time. Everything around us is in colour. Black and white is therefore immediately an interpretation of the world, rather than a copy.
Michael KennaConceive a jelly-fish such as sails in our summer seas, bell-shaped and of enormous size - far larger, I should judge, than the dome of St. Paul's. It was of a light pink colour veined with a delicate green, but the whole huge fabric so tenuous that it was but a fairy outline against the dark blue sky. It pulsated with a delicate and regular rhythm. From it there depended two long drooping, green tentacles, which swayed slowly backwards and forwards. This gorgeous vision passed gently with noiseless dignity over my head, as light and fragile as a soap-bubble, and drifted upon its stately way.
Arthur Conan DoyleFor instead of trying to reproduce exactly what I see before me, I make more arbitrary use of colour to express myself more forcefully.
Vincent Van GoghHe flushed, the colour dark against his pale skin. 'I mean. Tessa Gray, will you do me the honour of becoming my wife?' Jem.
Cassandra ClareThe problem of direct colour photography has been facing us since the turn of the last century.
Gabriel LippmannColour is a human need like water and fire. It is a raw material indispensable to life
Fernand LegerThe ideal reader of my novels is a lapsed Catholic and failed musician, short-sighted, colour-blind, auditorily biased, who has read the books that I have read.
Anthony BurgessThe more ugly, old, nasty, ill, and poor I become the more I want to get my own back by producing vibrant, well-arranged, radiant colour.
Vincent Van GoghAll sedentary workers ... suffer from the itch, are a bad colour, and in poor condition ... for when the body is not kept moving the blood becomes tainted, its waste matter lodges in the skin, and the condition of the whole body deteriorates.
Bernardino RamazziniMy motivation comes from a love of being creative. I'm in love with music and colour and laughter and dancing and all things that are beautiful.
RuPaulWith the passing of time, as well as the social evolution and genetic exchange, we ended up putting our conscience in the colour of blood and in the salt of tears, and, as if that were not enough, we made our eyes into a kind of mirror turned inwards, with the result that they often show without reserve what we are verbally trying to deny.
Jose SaramagoIn the 20th century, we had a century where at the beginning of the century, most of the world was agricultural and industry was very primitive. At the end of that century, we had men in orbit, we had been to the moon, we had people with cell phones and colour televisions and the Internet and amazing medical technology of all kinds.
David GerroldI thought I could not breathe in that fine air That pure severity of perfect light I yearned for warmth and colour which I found In Lancelot.
Alfred Lord TennysonWisdom teaches us to do, as well as to talk; and to make our words and actions all of a colour.
Seneca the YoungerThose who can serve best, those who help most, those who sacrifice most, those are the people who will be loved in life and honoured in death, when all questions of colour are swept away and when in a free country free citizens shall meet on equal grounds.
Annie BesantI've handled colour as a man should behave. You may conclude that I consider ethics and aesthetics as one.
Josef AlbersFor with him the phantoms of the mind (which to the average man are merely phantoms) projected themselves with a bodily vividness and violence. Not only had they the colour and authority of accomplished fact, they were invested with an immortality denied to facts.
May SinclairDemocritus sometimes does away with what appears to the senses, and says that none of these appears according to truth but only according to opinion: the truth in real things is that there are atoms and void. 'By convention sweet', he says, 'by convention bitter, by convention hot, by convention cold, by convention colour: but in reality atoms and void.'
Sextus EmpiricusAchilles too staggered a moment. He felt his soul change colour. Blood pooled at his feet, and though he continued to stand upright and triumphant in the sun, his spirit set off on its own downward path and approached the boarders of an unknown region.
David MaloufThe capacity to transform itself from the inside makes capitalism a somewhat peculiar beast - chameleon-like, it perpetually changes it colour; snake-like, it periodically sheds its skin.
David HarveyIt is so easy to waste our lives: our days, our hours, our minutes. It is so easy to take for granted the pale new growth on an evergreen, the sheen of the limestone on Fifth Avenue, the colour of our kidsโ eyes, the way the melody in a symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises again. It is so easy to exist instead of live. Unless you know there is a clock ticking.
Anna QuindlenSo long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. But to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its colour, in deference to some Headmaster with a silver pot in his hand or to some professor with a measuring-rod up his sleeve, is the most abject treachery, and the sacrifice of wealth and chastity which used to be said to be the greatest of human disasters, a mere flea-bite in comparison.
Virginia WoolfI had been living with dialysis for three years or so, and the new kidney felt like a reprieve, a new gift of life. I felt alive again and I guess that has had an effect on my use of colour.
Peter WrightColonialism is a terrible bane for a people upon whom it is imposed, but a blessing for a language. English's drive to exploit the new and the alien, its zeal in robbing words from other languages, its incapacity to feel qualms over the matter, its museum-size overabundance of vocabulary, it shoulder-shrug approach to spelling, its don't-worry-be-happy concern for grammar-the result was a language whose colour and wealth Henry loved.
Yann MartelOne can derive the same fun from print-making as from making mud pies and great subtlety can be achieved through the use of transparent inks, half-tone screens and even accidental colour combinations, which is often where the art hides.
Ralph SteadmanNearly all the Brazilian supporters are wearing yellow shirts - it's a fabulous kaleidoscope of colour.
John MotsonI had been doing wall drawings, but they were always black and white. Then in 1993 I painted all the walls of a room to make an installation and as soon as I saw the colour on the walls, it changed my whole life.
Michael Craig-MartinI have been using the computer as a work aid since the mid-90's. It is extraordinarily well suited to how I think and work and has transformed my practice. Nearly everything I have done in the past 15 years would have been impossible without it. I use the computer for drawing, composing and colour planning everything, from postage stamps to paintings to architectural-scale installations.
Michael Craig-MartinRacism is an attack on the very notion of the universality of human rights. It systematically denies certain people the enjoyment of their full human rights because of their colour, race, ethnicity, descent or national origin.
Irene KhanBased on mixtures of the three primary colours, along with black and white, I come up with a certain number of possible colours and, by multiplying these by two or four, I obtain a definite number of colour fields that I multiply yet again by two, etc. But the complete realization of this project demands a great deal of time and work.
Gerhard RichterI believe that one should not think too much about nature when painting, at least not during the painting's conception. The colour sketch should be made exactly as one has perceived things in nature. But personal feeling is the main thing.
Paula Modersohn-BeckerI think it's because it was an emotional story, and emotions come through much stronger in black and white. Colour is distracting in a way, it pleases the eye but it doesn't necessarily reach the heart.
Kim HunterImagine (if you dare) a whimsical marriage of Lord Dunsany and S.J. Perelman, and you have something approaching the tales of Rhys Hughes, filled with gaudy colour, slapstick, puns, fantastic creatures, and the occasional unexpected chill. Hughes' world is a magical one - and his language if the most magical thing of all.
T. E. D. KleinBut, I would always be thinking of how pictures are constructed and colour, how to use it, I mean you're using it for constructing, makes you think about it, the place did as well.
David HockneyIt is my mind, with its store of images, that gives the world colour and sound; and that supremely real and rational certainty which I call "experience" is, in its most simple form, an exceedingly complicated structure of mental images. Thus there is, in a certain sense, nothing that is directly experienced except the mind itself. Everything is mediated through the mind.
Carl JungWhen the short days of winter came, dusk fell before we had well eaten our dinners. When we met in the street the houses had grown sombre. The space of sky above us was the colour of ever-changing violet and towards it the lamps of the street lifted their feeble lanterns. The cold air stung us and we played till our bodies glowed. Our shouts echoed in the silent street.
James Joyce