Canvas Quotes - Page 15

• The camera was waiting for me by predestination and I took to it as a musician takes to the piano or a painter to canvas. I found that I was master of the elements, that I could work miracles.

  Alfred Stieglitz

  Piano, Waiting, Miracle

  5 Copy quote

• I always get into arguments with people who want to retain the old values in painting - the humanistic values that they always find on the canvas. If you pin them down, they always end up asserting that there is something there besides the paint on the canvas. My painting is based on the fact that only what can be seen there is there... What you see is what you see.

  Frank Stella

  People, Want, Facts

  "Questions to Stella and Judd". Interview with Bruce Glaser, www.artnews.com. September 1966.

  28 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is the custom of Venice to paint on canvas, either because it does not split and is not worm-eaten, or because pictures can be made of any size desired, or else for convenience... so that they can be sent anywhere with very little trouble and expense.

  Giorgio Vasari

  Venice, Splits, Littles

  Giorgio Vasari (1963). “The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors, and Architects”, London : Dent ; New York : Dutton

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• By having the big lines of the composition going out of the canvas, your imagination can wander beyond the edge. It will make it seem part of a large composition.

  Charles Webster Hawthorne

  Imagination, Going Out, Lines

  Richard Mühlberger, Charles Webster Hawthorne (1999). “Charles Webster Hawthorne”, University of Washington Press

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Have as much fun as you can and don't feel that the edge of your canvas confines you - let your vision go right on.

  Charles Webster Hawthorne

  Fun, Vision, Feels

  Richard Mühlberger, Charles Webster Hawthorne (1999). “Charles Webster Hawthorne”, University of Washington Press

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Keep this little canvas, it is a promise for the future. When I say 'keep this canvas,' I mean for the influence on yourself. When one does a good thing, it's well to keep it to show how foolish we are at other times.

  Charles Webster Hawthorne

  Future, Mean, Promise

  Richard Mühlberger, Charles Webster Hawthorne (1999). “Charles Webster Hawthorne”, University of Washington Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If you look into the past of the successful painter you will find square miles of canvas behind him.

  Charles Webster Hawthorne

  Success, Past, Squares

  Richard Mühlberger, Charles Webster Hawthorne (1999). “Charles Webster Hawthorne”, University of Washington Press

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• I throw down the gauntlet to chance. For example, I prepare the ground for a picture by cleaning my brush over the canvas. Spilling a little turpentine can also be helpful.

  Joan Miro

  Example, Littles, Chance

  8 Copy quote

• Never, never do I set to work on a canvas in the state it comes in from the shop. I provoke accidents - a form, a splotch of color. Any accident is good enough. I let the matiere decide. Then I prepare a ground by, for example, wiping my brushes on the canvas. Letting fall some drops of turpentine on it would do just as well. If I want to make a drawing I crumple the sheet of paper or I wet it; the flowing water traces a line and this line may suggest what is to come next.

  Joan Miro

  Fall, Drawing, Color

  60 Copy quote

• Well, painting is the one thing I do, that is just me. It's me and easels, and the pencils. And as long as I don't drool too much over the canvas, the colors come out pretty good. And it's a chance to express all that I've got inside, that I sometimes keep hidden. And I think that's why I paint big broad, wide open landscapes.

  Joni Eareckson Tada

  Thinking, Color, Long

  7 Copy quote

• People speak of the fear of the blank canvas as though it is a temporary hesitation, a trembling moment of self-doubt. For me it was more like being abducted from my bed by a clown, thrust into a circus arena with a wicker chair, and told to tame a pissed-off lion in front of an expectant crowd.

  Hannah Kent

  Self, People, Doubt

  Hannah Kent (2013). “Burial Rites”, p.234, Pan Macmillan

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Fashion goes beyond fabric; it is the attempt to manifest art on a breathing canvas. I am very excited to collaborate with the artistic community as we celebrate this diversity of creative vision.

  David Dixon

  Fashion, Art, Breathing

  4 Copy quote

• Maybe the given person, cup, or landscape is lost before one gets to painting. A figure exerts a continuing and unspecified influence on a painting as the canvas develops. The represented forms are loaded with psychological feeling. It can't ever just be painting.

  Richard Diebenkorn

  Feelings, Landscape, Cups

  4 Copy quote

• Great paintings have gradations, large and small... They serve to lift the subject off the two-dimensionality of the canvas. Gradations are an essential abstract convention.

  Robert Genn

  Two, Essentials, Painting

  Robert Genn (1996). “The Painter's Keys: A Seminar with Robert Genn”, p.20, Studio Beckett Publications

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  Robert Genn

  Technology, Hands, Juicy

  7 Copy quote

• If we view a great mountain soaring into the sky, it may excite us, evoke an uplifted feeling within us. There is an interplay of something we see outside of us with our inner response. The artist takes that response and its feelings and shapes it on canvas with paint so that when finished it contains the experience.

  Lawren Harris

  Artist, Views, Sky

  20 Copy quote

• When you think of painting as painting it is rather absurd. The real world is before us - glorious sunlight and activity and fresh air, and high speed motor cars and television, all the animation - a world apart from a little square of canvas that you smear paint on.

  Wayne Thiebaud

  Real, Thinking, Squares

  13 Copy quote

• It takes more time to rework a painting than it takes to fill in the canvas in the first place. I wish I could get them all right with the first coat like many of the old masters could, but seem destined to have to rework to make them even passable.

  E. J. Hughes

  Wish, Coats, Firsts

  7 Copy quote

• One of the main reasons I paint is because I think nature is so wonderful. I want to try to get my feelings of that down on canvas, if possible.

  E. J. Hughes

  Thinking, Feelings, Trying

  7 Copy quote

• The obedient in art are always the forgotten . . . The country is glorious but its beauties are unknown, and but waiting for a real live artist to splash them onto canvas . . . Chop your own path. Get off the car track.

  A. Y. Jackson

  Country, Art, Real

  20 Copy quote

• I would paint a portrait which would bring the tears, had I canvas for it, and the scene should be -- solitude, and the figures -- solitude -- and the lights and shades, each a solitude.

  Emily Dickinson

  Light, Solitude, Tears

  7 Copy quote

• I just get excited... like a painter with a blank canvas.

  Kenny Florian

  Mma, Excited, Blank

  6 Copy quote

• Fighting is art and there is nothing more beautiful than the painted canvas of just totally kicking someone's ass.

  Frank Shamrock

  Beautiful, Art, Fighting

  Frank Shamrock, Charles Fleming, Mickey Rourke (2012). “Uncaged: My Life as a Champion MMA Fighter”, p.251, Chicago Review Press

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• The minute I sat in front of a canvas I was happy. Because it was a world, and I could do what I liked in it.

  Alice Neel

  World, Minutes, Sat

  Carolyn Kinder Carr, Alice Neel (2002). “Alice Neel: women”, Rizzoli Intl Pubns

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• I try to work all over the canvas at once, because I feel that the forces of nature are unpredictable.

  Nell Blaine

  Trying, Methodology, Force

  6 Copy quote