Popular quotes about Painting! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 60
One learns about painting by looking at and imitating other painters. I can't stress enough how important it is, if you are interested at all in painting, to look and to look a great deal at painting. There is no other way to find out about painting.
Frank StellaPainting from life was incredibly important for me because it allowed me to train my eyes to see everything that is there. But I realized early on that painting from life wasn't something that I was all that invested in. I was always more interested in the painting than I was the people. For me, removing that as a compulsion offered me a lot more freedom to actually paint and think about color, form, movement, and light.
Lynette Yiadom-BoakyeI just realized that I never look at a painting and ask, 'Is this painting fictional or non-fictional?' Itโs just a painting.
Scott McClanahanI 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 GoldsmithIf I go to the National Gallery and I look at one of the great paintings that excite me there, it's not so much the painting that excites me as that the painting unlocks all kinds of valves of sensation within me which return me to life more violently.
Francis BaconI made work specifically for them not to like. If you made paintings of flowers and someone says they hate it, it's like, "What do you mean? It's a flower!" But if you make a painting of your name and somebody says they hate it, it's like, "Well, why would you like a painting of my name anyway?"
Josh SmithI liked painting, very early on, even more than drawing. I used poster paint on posterboard. I would copy images that I liked from magazines and books and combine them to make a "collage" kind of painting. In some ways, this is similar to how I work today.
Mark RydenIn my experience a painting is not made with colors and paint at all. I don't know what a painting is; who knows what sets off even the desire to paint?
Philip GustonWhat I think confuses things is when people approach painting as an inherently expressive or personal medium. We still tend to have this expectation of purity with painting, this idea not only that the artist must be reflected in his or her canvases, but more importantly, that this is where one finds meaning.
Landon MetzI do have great respect for painting, but I am definitely not a painter. I make drawings of paintings, and I'm jealous of painting for sure, but, for me, the paper gives my work a limit.
Robert LongoIn 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 SterneI would never put a sculpture in front of a painting, so that it is difficult to see the painting. I always place each thing so you can see it isolated. You can focus on every individual work.
Michael Craig-MartinA farce is that in poetry which grotesque (caricature) is in painting. The persons and actions of a farce are all unnatural, and the manners false, that is, inconsistent with the characters of mankind; and grotesque painting is the just resemblance of this.
John DrydenIf a certain activity, such as painting, becomes the habitual mode of expression, it may follow that taking up the painting materials and beginning work with them will act suggestively and so presently evoke a flight into the higher state.
Robert HenriPainters 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.
Chris MartinPainting, like music, has nothing to do with the reproduction of nature, nor interpretation of intellectual meanings. Whoever is able to feel the beauty of colors and forms has understood nonobjective painting.
Hilla von RebayMy studio practice is a - I suppose a bit more like [Thomas] Gainsborough or [Peter Paul] Rubens in the sense that any artist who wants to create a grand narrative on a grand scale has to sort of parse out some of the smaller aspects of painting or the more mundane aspects of painting to others.
Kehinde WileyIn effect, painting is the still memory of [the artist's] human motion, and our individual responses to it depend on who we are, on our character, which underlines the simple truth that no person leaves himself behind in order to look at a painting.
Siri HustvedtWhile 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.
Kehinde WileyUsually when I'm painting something it takes a lot of focus. I have the room I go into called the white room. In my imagination when I'm really focused I go into that white room and all that's there is me, my painting, and my tools. There's no distraction. When I'm really concentrated I like to have it silent but when I'm doing something that doesn't have to be necessarily perfect, I can just go for it.
Autumn de ForestI started getting really curious about art. I read about the Dadaists and the Futurists and the Constructivists - those kind of movements which were reflecting the angst of the people of their times. Their work was trying to lead a movement. I began thinking about what was happening, with painting on the streets and painting on the trains as being similar but also coming from a real, pure space. It wasn't being created by academies. It was a spontaneous combustion of ideas that just happened.
Jeffrey DeitchEvery 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 LoebYou are confronted with abysses of time that are, in a way, unfathomable. You see a painting in charcoal of raindeer and it was left unfinished and somebody else finished it. But through radio carbon dating we know that the next one completed the painting 5,000 years later. You're just blown away by the notion of passage of time. We have no relationship to that kind of depth of time.
Werner HerzogAbstraction 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.
Berenice AbbottBut I owe something to Vincent, and that is, in the consciousness of having been useful to him, the confirmation of my own original ideas about painting. And also, at difficult moments, the remembrance that one finds others unhappier than oneself.
Paul GauguinPainting allows me to use other portions of my brain pleasurably. Irony plays no part in what or how I paint. I paint the particular subject matter not to make polemical points but because I am interested in the human imprint on the landscape. I paint the landscape of my time and place with the stuff in it.
James Howard KunstlerI understand - and often make fun of - the desire to run to the wall text before running to the painting.
Frances StarkI love the trick of painting. You can have the movement within the still thing, but it is completely fixed. And that illusion is constantly exciting.
Cecily BrownWe need to understand that there is a process of learning and experience and success will stem from this. The painting represents life and the brushstroke represents the steps we take in life.
St. LuciaThink of the centre of interest in a painting as you would read it in a novel or see it in a movie. The crisis or climax is that point when you simply can't put the book down or wouldn't dare leave the movie, for whatever reason.
Mike SvobThe invention of photography has dealt a mortal blow to the old modes of expression, in painting as well as in poetry, where automatic writing, which appeared at the end of the nineteenth century, is a true photography of thought. Since a blind instrument now assured artists of achieving the aim they had set themselves up to that time, they now aspired, not without recklessness, to break with the imitation of appearances.
Andre BretonSometimes I go to sleep thinking, "I don't like this painting." But then I wake up in the morning, look at it again and think, "Actually, that's not so bad."
Rebecca HornBy 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.
Edvard MunchThis is what the Democrats are fighting for. They're fighting for you not to have a job and still have health care so you can pursue your entrepreneurial risk of writing, painting, taking pictures. It's just such a pain in the rear end to have to have a job. It's so damn mean of this country to require people to have a job. It stifles people. It stifles creativity and economic growth to require people to have a job, to have health care. What a country. Man, are we horribly rotten mean to people.
Rush LimbaughPainting is at once a form of meditation and an utter, complete personal engagement with life.
Steven WhitneyCinema 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.
Billy ZaneThink of anybody - Dostoevsky or Jane Austen - [their work] was always something that now we would call political. So I don't see those separations too much, between what is artistic and what is political. Maybe in painting... no, I don't even believe that.
Toni Morrison[M]editation is not just being silentโthat is only one part of it.... [I]t has to be creative. And when a poetry comes out of your inner silences, or a painting, it has a flavor which is not of this world.
Rajneesh"Nothing ever happens like you imagine it will," she says. The sky is like a monochromatic contemporary painting, drawing me in with its illusion of depth, pulling me up. "Yeah, that's true," I say. But then after I think about it for a second, I add, "But then again, if you don't imagine, nothing ever happens at all."
John GreenOne of the reasons I moved away from painting was because I eventually discovered that I wanted to deal more with motion, time, and performance - and that became a much bigger part of my life both as an actor and as a musician and someone who goes on stage and travels around the world and works on productions.
Jared LetoThe burden God places on each of us is to become who we are meant to be. We are most fully ourselves when Christ most fully lives in us and through us. The mother shines brightest with her child in her arms, the father when he forgives his wandering son, and the artist when he or she is drawing attention to grace, by showing the pinprick of light overcoming the darkness in the painting, or the story, or the song. The world knows darkness. Christ came into the world to show us light. I have seen it, have been blinded by it, invaded by it. I will tell its story.
Andrew Peterson