Painting Quotes

All gardening is landscape painting,' said Alexander Pope.

I trust the symbol that is arrived at in the making of the painting. Meaningful symbols aren't invented as such, they are made or discovered as symbol later.

Be prepared! All of your gear should be in a state of readiness so you can concentrate on painting. Choose your brushes as you would choose weapons before battle.

Be flexible - the order in which you introduce the elements of a painting should not be a rigid system. What worked last time may not work this time.

Every great painting is left incomplete at the point where its completion is obvious.

A painting is what you make of it, besides which, 'Moon, Weeping' has a better ring to it than 'Paintbrush, Dripping.

Nature engenders the science of painting

It is this research into pure painting that is the problem at the present moment. I do not know any painters in Paris who are really searching for this ideal world.

Landscape painting tends to fall under more academic controls. I must say I often like working within these controls. It gives me the feeling that I'm taking part in a noble tradition.

My app is the same juicy paint used by Vincent Van Gogh; my screen is the woven canvas of Titian. Painting by hand, I've come to figure, is a certain kind of love.

This evening, while signing my name on a painting, I was thinking I might stop signing my cheques.

Once as I sat painting, I became aware of a man's face hovering near me, moving closer and closer to the panel I was working on. When he spoke he said, 'That is a fantastic brush!

I suppose what you're doing as a painter is making a record of your trip through life. I can't think of any job that is quite as satisfactory as doing a painting.

An opening and a receptiveness to design and pattern for its own sake seems to free the painting hand.

My problem painting from my life was I found that you can't paint dirt without romanticising it.

Paint like a fiend when the idea possesses you.

To paint is to know how to put nothing on canvas, and have it look like something when you stand back.

Painting should never look as if it were done with difficulty, however difficult it may actually have been.

There are forms that can only be seen when you are near a painting, others only appear when you are far away.

I 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.

A little amateur painting in water colors shows the innocent and the quiet mind.

Every picture one paints involves not painting others.

I started with straight, basic, symbolic structures. My problem now is the opposite; as I get older, I try to make my paintings more contrapuntal, richer.

Basically painting is total idiocy.

And I think a painting has such a limited life anyway

But I was in awe of the painters; I mean I was new in New York, and I thought the painting that was going on here was just unbelievable

There was a whole language that I could never make function for myself in relationship to painting, and that was attitudes like tortured, struggle, pain.

Subject matter does not determine a successful painting. It is the manner in which one personally envisions and interprets the subject that is the magical equation.

I firmly believe that a representational painting is only as strong as its abstract components.

Values create dimension, but color usually receives all of the attention. When painting with oils, placing dark and light pigments next to each other can be an accident waiting to happen.

You have to live in a state of thinking your painting is good, or you couldn't do it.

I kind of do the drawing with the painting in mind, but it's very hard to guess at a size or a color and all the colors around it and what it will really look like.

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 Painter's Keys is a timeless, universal guide to lifemanship masquerading as a painting blog.

Read in order to write, but paint in order to paint.

I think everyone on the planet is a fan of a painting because everyone is a fan of visual stimulation, but I've had freedom in the world [of painting] because I've kept it to myself.

I am constantly amazed at how little painters know about painting, writers about writing, merchants about business, manufacturers about manufacturing. Most men just drift.

Painting is an investigation of being.

Painting, like water, takes any form. Paint is a film of pigment on a plane. It is not real in the way that gravity-bound sculpture is real. It is, however, real.

I think there is a total equality for me between painting a literary figure or Kate Moss or my Mum or a dog or a bird. To me, they are all absolutely equal.

I like the transience of Klimt paintings.

At the museum a troubled woman destroys a sand painting meticulously created over days by Tibetan monks. The monks are not disturbed. The work is a meditation. They simply begin again.

Painting directly from nature is difficult as things do not remain the same; the camera helps to retain the picture in your mind.

My paintings cannot be a negation of what has always been and always will be necessary - drawing and search for values.

It is easy to have a lot of paintings or projects hanging around that are 'almost done.

Painting has always been a healthy and happy place for me to create. People really like that experience and so do I.

I know the world that I am painting is not a reality. It is a whim, an entertainment to provoke something in people, whether as escapism or relief. I think that is very valid.

There is no civilization that did not begin with art, Whether it was drawing a line in the sand, painting a cave or dancing.

The more successful paintings just fall off the brush. The less successful ones take longer.

You're trying to make your painting too complicated. Paintings get complicated all by themselves.