PAINTING QUOTES III
quotations about painting
A painter does a painting, and he paints it and he paints it, and that's it, you know. He has the joy of creating it, it hangs on a wall, and somebody buys it, and maybe somebody buys it again, or maybe nobody buys it and it sits up in a loft somewhere until he dies. But he never, you know, nobody ever, nobody ever said to Van Gogh, 'Paint us Starry Night again, man!' You know? He painted it and that was it.
JONI MITCHELL
Miles of Aisles
A generation ago it was the fashion to declare that we should not look for any meaning in a picture, we should be content with its "significant form." An artist was praised for painting his mother as if she had been a piece of cheese. But the human mind is strangely recalcitrant to such theories. It persists in taking an interest in the "subject" of a picture.
JAMES LAVER
Models and Muses
You have your brush, you have your colors, you paint paradise, then in you go.
NIKOS KAZANTZAKIS
attributed, Living, Loving & Learning
Painting is by nature a luminous language.
ROBERT DELAUNAY
attributed, Under the Spell of Orpheus: The Persistence of a Myth in Twentieth-century Art
I visit him a few times downtown
while he paints.
We talk about how he's going to Spain
for the fall semester
and he shows me a painting he did
and points to this one part,
a bridge, and tells me he thought of me
when he painted it.
It is so sad
how knowing something
so small
can make me so happy
SAMANTHA SCHUTZ
I Don't Want to Be Crazy
The painting is almost the natural man:
For since dishonour traffics with man's nature,
He is but outside; pencill'd figures are
Ev'n such as they give out.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Timon of Athens
If a picture is daubed with many glaring colors, the vulgar eye admires it; whereas he judges very contemptuously of some admirable design sketched out only with a black pencil, though by the hand of Raphael.
ISAAC WATTS
attributed, Day's Collacon
The first degree of proficiency is, in painting, what grammar is in literature--a general preparation for whatever species of the art the student may afterward choose for his more particular application.
JOSHUA REYNOLDS
A Discourse, delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy on the Distribution of the Prizes, December 11, 1769
Every painted image of something is also about the absence of the real thing. All painting is about the presence of absence.
JOHN BERGER
Keeping a Rendezvous
Painting something that defies the law of the land is good. Painting something that defies the law of the land and the law of gravity at the same time is ideal.
BANKSY
Wall and Piece
Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.
PABLO PICASSO
attributed, Artist to Artist: Inspiration & Advice from Artists Past & Present
Paint me as I am. If you leave out the scars and wrinkles, I will not pay you a shilling.
OLIVER CROMWELL
remark to the painter Lely, The Social History of Great Britain During the Reigns of the Stuarts
Or are you like the painting of a sorrow, a face without a heart?
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Hamlet
A fine work of art -- music, dance, painting, story -- has the power to silence the chatter in the mind and lift us to another place.
ROBERT MCKEE
Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting
Painting, when we have allowed for the pleasure of imitation, can only affect simply by the images it presents; and even in painting, a judicious obscurity in some things contributes to the effect of the picture.
EDMUND BURKE
A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful
Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is.
JACKSON POLLOCK
attributed, Painting After Pollock: Structures of Influence
I lacked the knowledge of linear perspective needed to get into the art school, so now I whitewash walls and imagine I'm heaven's landscape painter.
BAUVARD
Some Inspirations for the Overenthusiastic
But who can paint
Like nature? Can Imagination boast,
Amid its gay creation, hues like hers?
JAMES THOMSON
"Spring", The Seasons
Rais'd of themselves, their genuine charms they boast
And those who paint 'em truest praise 'em most.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Campaign
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 this.
FRIDA KAHLO
The Letters of Frida Kahlo: Cartas Apasionadas