Popular quotes about Painting! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 6
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.
Frank StellaIt was a figure painting class, where you had a model, and [Robert von Neumann ] would wander around and he'd come up behind someone and say, "Well, what are you trying to do?" And if you told him what you were trying to do, he would then proceed to discuss this with you and suggest things that you might look at and ways in which you could improve what you were attempting to do, etc - never worked on your painting, never touched your painting but talked extensively about what you were trying to do.
Warren MacKenzieSometimes you look at a painting and certain parts are so beautiful. You say, "Wow, this is fantastic," but 10 minutes later you most likely have to kill it. Every painting wants to live. You want to build and bring this type of painting to the climax. When it's at the highest point, you want more. And then if you want more, you might destroy it. So you take a chance.
Michael ChowFor example, in one of my last exhibitions I had a 50-foot massive painting with I think perhaps a hundred thousand hand-painted small flowers. This was the Christ painting [The Dead Christ in the Tomb, 2008] in my Down exhibition [2008]. Now, I simply can't spend eight hours a day painting small, identical flowers. And so I've got a team that allows me to have these grand, sweeping statements.
Kehinde WileyI would have conversations with European artists. Meaning, people look at my painting and one person would say, "Oh, your painting is just like so-and-so!" Another person would say, "It's just like so-and-so." But at the end, it's a chain of relay like a marathon. There are so many so-and-so's that eventually it becomes mine. My dialogue was completely European, with the '40s, '50s, '60s artists, but on the exterior side I do big painting. It's post-Pollock. It's current. It's a meeting of the time. The Chinese side just comes out.
Michael ChowI donโt trust painting. At least not in New York. Most painting here relies on formula and repetition, whoring itself to the market. There seems to be no risk and once a painter gets a strategy, very little exploration. As a result, I stopped thinking about painting a long time ago. I prefer forms of art that are more market-resistant, more idea-based, more - for lack of a better word - risky.
Kenneth GoldsmithWhile a painting, even one that meets photographic standards of resemblance, is never more than the stating of an interpretation, a photograph is never less than the registering of an emanation (light waves reflected by objects) โ a material vestige of its subject in a way that no painting can be.
Susan SontagFor me, preparing the canvas takes longer than painting. The actual painting takes about half an hour.
Katherine BernhardtLike 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.
Lawrence WeinerIt 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.
Jackson PollockIn 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.
Laurence SterneWhen 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
Julia Margaret CameronI'm not so facile that I can accomplish or find out what I want to know or explore enough of the possibilities and a way of making a painting, say, in just one painting or two paintings.
Robert RauschenbergI trained as a painter, and I still love painting, but eventually I became aware that the physical aspect of painting didn't really suit me. I didn't enjoy working in the medium. It's very messy. I prefer to have it clean, with a nice computer.
Loretta LuxMy sister-in-law is a painter, and I'll say, how long did it take you to paint that painting. She'll say, It took me maybe three days, but it took me all my life to get the skills to paint that painting.
Anthony DoerrWhen we paint, whether it is on our bodies for ceremony or on bark or canvas for the market, we're not just painting for fun or profit, we're painting as we always have done to demonstrate our continuing link with our country and the rights and responsibilities we have to it.
Galarrwuy YunupinguWhen 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.
Julio IglesiasEvery single painting is different. I'm always trying to figure out what I'm interested in. Usually when I go through and I make the collages or the images for ideas that I want to paint, it's like an Ouija board. Each painting I do is trying to understand what the hell I'm looking at, or want to look at.
Damian LoebI did photography, painting, and drawing, but I prefer sculpture. I like it because it's very physical.
PJ HarveyAfter my divorce, painting took me out of panic mode and into a serene, calm place. I could absolutely lose myself.
Jane SeymourStudents 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?"
Parker J. PalmerThe most important thing in art is The Frame. For painting: literally; for other arts: figuratively - because without this humble appliance, you can't know where The Art stops and The Real World begins.
Frank ZappaThe fact that people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I can communicate those basic human emotions.. the people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when painting them. And if you say you are moved only by their color relationships then you miss the point.
Mark RothkoWe live in a time when people are afraid of beauty, because beauty passes; you can't hang on to it. And even if you see something or someone beautiful, the next time you hear it, it sounds different. So you can't cling to beauty; beauty passes and when that passes, you realize you pass too, and you will die. And that's why people cry at a beautiful view, a beautiful lecture, a beautiful painting, a new baby.
Pat SteirEvery time somebody writes a theory about where literature's going, that person is not only contributing thought but nudging things to happen in one way or the other. Just as in painting, there's much more interest in the American scene painters and the early American... like the Ashcan school of painters. Who would have thought, 50 years ago, that Norman Rockwell would again be considered a serious painter? And yet, there are a lot of people who are saying Rockwell was a very accomplished technician. These things are constantly moving.
Ted KooserCreating things. I love the idea of creation and creativity. Whether it's a character, a short film, a piece of music, a painting, or a bookcase - to watch something go from an idea to a creation is pretty much where it's at for me.
Eric LangeIn some exquisite critical hints on "Eurythmy," Goethe remarks, "that the best composition in pictures is that which, observing the most delicate laws of harmony, so arranges the objects that they by their position tell their own story." And the rule thus applied to composition in painting applies no less to composition in literature.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron LyttonWhen I adjust materials of different kinds to one another, I have taken a step in advance of mere oil painting, for in addition to playing off color against color, line against line, form against form, etc., I play off material against material, for example, wood against sackcloth.
Kurt SchwittersWhenever I see a Frans Hals I feel like painting, but when I see a Rembrandt I feel like giving up!
Max LiebermannI use those expectations as a color on my palette, a certain temperature in the room. You can use those expectations for the great punchline, but also for a great painting, in society.
Kehinde WileyOnly when you are moved by a painting should you buy it. Being moved is what collecting is all about.
Walter AnnenbergPeople say, Why dont you just paint with paintbrushes? I say that I feel more connected to my painting using my skin. Its very tribal in a way - savage!
Meredith OstromPainting is at once a form of meditation and an utter, complete personal engagement with life.
Steven WhitneyI still have agents in France, Los Angeles and Amsterdam who call and suggest parts. I'd love to keep on doing both painting and acting until the end of my days.
Sylvia KristelMan needs music, literature, and painting - all those oases of perfection that make up art - to compensate for the rudeness and materialism of life.
Fernando BoteroSimultaneous contrast is not just a curious optical phenomenon โ it is the very heart of painting. Repeated experiments with adjacent colors will show that any ground subtracts its own hue from the colors which it carries and therefore influences.
Josef AlbersYou see, should I stand in front of a landscape and paint it, I'm completely ignoring the factor of time. While I am painting it, it's changing, clouds are changing, all sorts of things. So there's the myth there of someone creating in a timeless vacuum.
William S. BurroughsYour art is part of the big painting of your life. You are on your own, standing by yourself in the middle of creation. In the beauty of that aloneness, and in how you respond to it, you will find your passion.
Michele Cassou