Quotes About Painting

You have bits of canvas that are unpainted and you have these thick stretcher bars. So you see that a painting is an object; that it's not a window into something - you're not looking at a landscape, you're not looking at a portrait, but you're looking at a painting. It's basically: A painting is a painting is a painting. And it's what Frank Stella said famously: What you see is what you see.

I just realized that I never look at a painting and ask, 'Is this painting fictional or non-fictional?' It’s just a painting.

There are absences, but there are also presences. It's about how painting can evolve its own abstractions. I didn't know the painting was going to be about that, but it has to have that journey; I have to learn something, I have to end up somewhere I didn't expect to be, otherwise, I don't think it's painting.

Having a background in doing printmaking and letterpress, I think that I became very interested in images that were flat and graphic. And my painting still today is very flat...American craft is like that too - the painting is very flat. And also the painting that you see on the storefronts, handmade signs, tend to be very flat. That's probably my biggest influence.

A lot of young painters love to incorporate celebrity. One idea of being a painter is to use what's happening at the time. Velázquez was painting of his time. And so was Rembrandt. And Francis Bacon was painting his time in London. He was a real mover, but he saw the insect in the rose. But yes, when I do a painting, I want to take the "I did this" out of it. That's why I started using chance, like the markings on the wood. I never wanted to compose.

...if photos can reproduce the world more perfectly than any painter, can capture an instant, a look, a gesture, then what makes a painting good anymore? Painting subverts this subversion of its traditional nature by redefining itself - art is idea, not simply skillful execution. So, a work can be crudely made, or even machine made - but it has to be practically and functionally useless.

It's true, I do sometimes suspend myself over the canvas, but mostly I work at a table when I'm making a painting. When I use 'The Rig,' my feet are firmly anchored. I lower myself horizontally just long enough to make a brush stroke - a matter of seconds - and then I'm upright again. My assistant then erases the painting quickly with a squeegee and I go for it again... until I get it right. It's like trying to hit a home run.

I fell in love with painting. Painting allows me to see things as I want to and not necessarily as they are, it's an escape, a way to preserve thoughts and memories, a way to create hopes and dreams. - Marina

The world will not give you an endowment for your finger-painting. Your finger-painting may be marvelous, but our government and society do not value art adequately. We should fulminate against that and seek to change it, but in the meantime you have to make choices. If you're an artist who likes to have a steady income for yourself, for your children, for your partner, to help you engage in elder care as you take care of your parents or grandparents, that's a good thing.

Each painting seems to have a very specific size it wants to be. I have even started a painting or two over just because I didn't like the feeling of the particular image at a particular size. The Parlor needed to be large because I wanted it to feel like a full-size room you could step into. Unfortunately for me, I paint the same way on an eight-foot canvas as I do on a five-inch miniature. I still use very tiny brushes and noodle every square inch. It took me nearly a year to paint The Parlor.

Usually people start with painting and then go on to make installations; my painting came from installation.

In the back of every painting there's an entire universe that makes it possible for the painting to be there: an army of conservators, technicians, people who maintain these things, the market.

It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess. Otherwise there is pure harmony, an easy give and take, and the painting comes out well.

Most of my painting is done sitting in a chair with a book. I'd say it's 80 per cent sitting and reading, 10 per cent eating and ten per cent painting.

There's something always instinctively visually right about nature. There's no difference, to my eye, between looking at a great painting and looking at nature. Because painting, when it's great, has the same immutable rightness, unquestioned rightness, about it.

I wanted to be a visual artist, but I realized I was more affected by what I read than by what I saw. I would go to a show at a museum and look at a painting and say, 'Oh I wish I owned that,' and that would be the end of my relationship with a painting. With a short story I would read or with an author I would discover I could be haunted. It would affect my mood and affect the way that I saw the world. I thought, wow, it would be amazing to be able to do that.

Robert von Neumann taught painting, and when I finally got into a painting class of his, he reacted in much the same way.

In part of Lord Kames' Elements of Criticism, he says that "music improves the relish of a banquet." That I deny,--any more than painting might do. They may both be additional pleasures, as well as conversation is, but are perfectly distinct notices; and cannot, with the least propriety, be said to mix or blend with the repast, as none of them serve to raise the flavor of the wine, the sauce, the meat, or help to quicken appetite. But music and painting both add a spirit to devotion, and elevate the ardor.

In old times men used their powers of painting to show the objects of faith, in later times they use the objects of faith to show their powers of painting.

On the floor I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more part of the painting, since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting.

For me, architecture is an art the same as painting is an art or sculpture is an art. Yet, architecture moves a step beyond painting and sculpture because it is more than using materials. Architecture responds to functional outputs and environmental factors. Yet, fundamentally, it is important for me to stress the art in architecture to bring harmony.

It's not a matter of painting life, it's a matter of giving life to painting.

When an actor is in the moment, he or she is engaged in listening for the next right thing creatively. When a painter is painting, he or she may begin with a plan, but that plan is soon surrendered to the painting's own plan. This is often expressed as 'The brush takes the next stroke.' In dance, in composition, in sculpture, the experience is the same: we are more the conduit than the creator of what we express

There is no light painting or dark painting, but simply relations of tones.

Painters should shut up and paint and when we stop painting we should dance or have sex or get a massage or take a shower and we shouldn't be talking about painting.

Painting has always been a means of self-expression for me. Therefore, I paint because I have to and need to, not necessarily because I want to. Subconsciously or not, the figures I paint are a reflection of myself and whatever mood I am in at the time, so every painting is in essence a self-portrait.

Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.

If you call painting dumb poetry, the painter may call poetry blind painting.

When the painting is hanging on your wall for a long time, you don't notice it. You get tired of it, even if it's a Picasso. When the next generation inherits the painting, they sell it. I don't want to be sold.

In my work, I want to create an understanding, not about what a painting looks like but about what a painting says.

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.

If, while I'm painting, I distort or destroy a motif, it is not a planned or conscious act, but rather it has a different justification: I see the motif, the way I painted it, is somehow ugly or unbearable. Then I try to follow my feelings and make it attractive. And that means a process of painting, changing or destroying - for however long it takes - until I think it has improved. And I don't demand an explanation from myself as to why this is so.

The first hope of a painter who feels hopeful about painting is the hope that the painting will move, that it will live outside its frame.

Ever since I started painting, I have tried to get the fluidity and surprise of image connection, the simultaneity of film montage, into painting.

I used to split my time between writing, music and painting. I would work on a book and then abandon it, start a band, do an album, quit music, then do a gallery show. Eventually I decided to give writing a serious shot.

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.

When I began as an artist, I already did not like expressionism, or abstract expressionism, because abstract painting had already been done. I did not want to belong to any one group or the other, and I'm not one or the other.

Painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war.

One does a whole painting for one peach and people think just the opposite - that particular peach is but a detail.

Sometimes I could quit paint and take to charring. It must be fine to clean perfectly, to shine and polish and know that it could not be done better. In painting that never occurs.

The problem of a painting is physical and metaphysical, the same as I think life is physical and metaphysical.

Abstraction in photography is ridiculous, and is only an imitation of painting. We stopped imitating painters a hundred years ago, so to imitate them in this day and age is laughable.

I think of a piece, and then people who are competent fabricate it. But lately I've started finger painting, which probably should be a joke but isn't!

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.

Sunlight is painting.

Both sex and death are eternal themes. You could make thousands of movies on this theme, and whether you have a human being who is painting, singing, making a film, writing, these are the themes that you will come back to and return to. If you don't have any of these artistic expressions, sex is one of the only gifts that nature gave you for free, so it is very important to celebrate it. And then, with death, we are condemned to that. This is absolutely present in our lives.

Around 1980, I went back to painting with a vengeance.

... the true seeing is within; and painting stares at you with an insistent imperfection.