Quotes About Painting

When I am in a painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. It is only after a sort of 'get acquainted' period that I see what I have been about. I have no fears about making changes, destroying the image, etc, because the painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through. 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.

The true essence of Chinese culture is sophistication, refinement, the spirit of poetry. The spirit of ink painting and calligraphy lives on forever. Calligraphy is more important than painting. Chinese always consider nature. Man is a very small part of nature. That's why in Chinese painting you see huge mountains and man very small, very humble before nature. You must be harmonious and one with nature. You don't fight it. And then there's a bit of a poetry. Of course, it's very complicated, but also very simple.

My paintings are well-painted, not nimbly but patiently. My painting contains in it the message of pain. I think that at least a few people are interested in it. It's not revolutionary. Why keep wishing for it to be belligerent? I can't. Painting completed my life. I lost three children and a series of other things that would have fulfilled my horrible life. My painting took the place of all of this. I think work is the best.

life's kind of like a painting. A really bizarre, abstract painting. You could look at it and think that all it is, is a blur. And you could continue living your life thinking that all it is, is just a blur. But if you really look at it, really see it, focus on it, and use your imagination, life can become so much more. The painting could be of the sea, the sky, people,buildings, a butterfly on a flower, or anything except the blur you were once convinced it was.

There's a difference between craft and painting. Craft, your job is to make it exactly the same every time. Painting is the opposite, but in painting there is some craftsmanship, which is called technique. But technique is spontaneous. That's the treasure, the most important part. You are in it.

For me, preparing the canvas takes longer than painting. The actual painting takes about half an hour.

Color is a language. It is the language of painting. How painting expresses itself is in large part with color.

At some point I realized that the text was the painting and that everything else was extraneous. The painting became the act of writing a text on a canvas, but in all my work, text turns into abstraction.

Like the people that in the 60s or 70s claimed the "end of painting" - all they did was open up a whole new branch for painting. Happily, it doesn't work. It's not a reason for art. Closing something out is not a reason for something to exist.

Almost as though the painting itself becomes the embodiment of a type of struggle for visibility, and this might be considered the main subject of the painting.

Painting to me is addictive. These are moments when it is inspiring, but they are few and far between. I keep my tools sharpened for the moment when things do start clicking, but that doesn't happen a lot. I really have to push myself sometimes. Painting is a profession in which it is very easy to be lazy, particularly if you have any degree of success.

All my life I have painted pictures so that certain people would drop dead when they looked at them, but I have not succeeded yet. The worst painting cant hurt you, but a bad driver can kill you, a bad judge can send you to the chair, a bad politician can ruin an entire country, That is why even a bad painting is sacred.

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

Something in me knows where I’m going, and - well, painting is a state of being. ... Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is.

So far as photography satisfied a wish, it satisfied a wish not confined to painters, but a human wish, intensifying since the Reformation, to escape subjectivity and metaphysical isolation - a wish for power to reach this world, having for so long tried, at last hopelessly, to manifest fidelity to another... Photography overcame subjectivity in a way undreamed of by painting, one which does not so much defeat the act of painting as escape it altogether: by automatism, by removing the human agent from the act of reproduction.

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.

I realized that most people waste their lives earning a living, and I wanted to live. I love painting, so I keep painting. That's how I became an artist.

While it may seem a little mundane, the material realities of realizing the painting actually have a lot to do with how you should read the painting. For example, we assume that what the model is wearing is what we found him in in the streets. No; in fact, a lot of what happens is that in Photoshop certain aspects are being heightened or diminished. There is no actual material truth in these paintings.

I'm a tireless worker; I don't consider painting a work, it is not an obligation, I do it for pleasure; I haven't found anything that amuses me more than painting.

I never noticed competing with other generations. There's competition within your own generation, but that competition is good. Maybe you're annoyed that somebody's getting more money than you are, but what's really annoying is if someone's painting a better painting than you're making. So it's something to think about and work toward and stay focused on.

I think that the sheer fact that music can raise certain questions or put topics on the agenda has in itself already an effect. Just like any other art of cultural expression can do that - books, films, photos, painting - it can bring people together who share certain ideals, who don't find their ideas expressed properly, or even expressed at all, in the mainstream media.

Students want to know, "Are you painting by the numbers, or are you really present as a human being to what you are doing; and is it coming from inside of you?" So I would ask teachers this question: "Do you have a wellgrounded personal experience and conviction concerning whatever it is you are trying to teach?"

With a stroke of love on the canvas of my soul I'm painting a perfect world with shades of Michelangelo With each promise made in every heart that knows we can live in a perfect world in shades of Michelangelo I hear songs of children echo in the sky I hear songs of children a tomorrow so bright!

The act of painting is about one heart telling another heart where he found salvation.

I wish I could be more serious about painting. I think there may be something going on there and I should pursue it. I'm very old-fashioned - even with the music. I realize, while I have so much respect for the kookiness of people who go for it, who paint with their eyes closed, I am superclassical.

A lot of ideas don't translate very well into art. To say, "Oh my god, the grass is green ..." You're going to end up with a big green painting.

Self-consciousness is the enemy of all art, be it acting, writing, painting, or living itself, which is the greatest art of all.

I don't buy art. I'd rather buy a beautiful location or a beautiful site than buy art. A beautiful home is like owning a beautiful painting, except you can live in it.

I so love the animation process. Interesting, everything that I do in animation, the kind of crafting and skills of storytelling, totally work within the structure of the Disney nature films. In a weird way, I like to think that animation is like painting, and Disney nature is like sculpting. Animation you start with a blank canvas and you paint. With Disney nature, you start with a big block of imagery and you hone it down into your final story. Somewhere you end up with something kind of pretty to watch.

All great questions must be raised by great voices, and the greatest voice is the voice of the people - speaking out - in prose, or painting or poetry or music; speaking out - in homes and halls, streets and farms, courts and cafes - let that voice speak and the stillness you hear will be the gratitude of mankind.

When you drive, you are doing several things at once. You are using your eyes, ears, hands, your mind. If you have meditated for many years and have reached a lofty height in your meditation, as I have, you can meditate while running and cycling and painting.

I'm glad . . . that Edison didn't give up on the light bulb. That Luther refused to back down. That Michelangelo kept painting. That Lindbergh kept flying.

By painting colors and lines and forms seen in quickened mood I was seeking to make this mood vibrate as a phonograph does. This was the origin of the paintings in The Frieze of Life.

Cinema informed my painting by the sheer geography - on locations, there is so much downtime. And when you're spending all this time creating art by committee, the concept of the singular voice is a pleasant antidote.

In the studio, it took me a long time to work out how to make paintings that had the intensity that I was able to create by painting whole rooms. There is a very limited number of colours but there are many variations. I decided to use the purest palette that I could.

In my world, history comes down to language and art. No one cares much about what battles were fought, who won them and who lost them - unless there is a painting, a play, a song or a poem that speaks of the event.

I practice the artist's golden rule. I wouldn't want somebody telling me how to finish my painting, I'm not going to tell him how to finish his movie or how to shape his movie.

Twisting and wiring and stringing starching and curling, delicately painting spots and shadings on scraps of silk until what had been nothing more than a pile of brightly colored fragments had been transformed into the silk irises, forget-me-not, violets and roses that would adorn the hats of women and girls more fortunate than themselves.

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.

I know for sure that I have an instinct for color, and that it will come to me more and more, that painting is in the very marrow of my bones.

I wanted to make a cinema of ideas, not plots, and to use the same aesthetics as painting, which has always paid great attention to formal devices of structure, composition and framing.

Once you start painting, you could of course get lost. I mean you get out of yourself, you don't know whether you're thinking, you just act actually sometimes.

Not everything in life can or should be explained. Part of every painting should be incomplete...to be completed in the mind of the viewer.

The sense of motion in painting and sculpture has long been considered as one of the primary elements of the composition.

I started painting as a hobby when I was little. I didn't know I had any talent. I believe talent is just a pursued interest. Anybody can do what I do.

There are times when I love to play all kinds of complicated games in painting. But this is one case when I need to be fairly straightforward. I'll just try to paint the man, his intelligence, his amiability and his stature, maybe paint him fairly close to humor and try to get it just right.

I have two writer daughters, and a psychoanalyst daughter, and a lawyer daughter, and they wish we didn't write, I'm sure, but we write. If we were a painting family, we would paint.