Canvas Quotes - Page 9

• The things I felt... about certain painters of the past that... inspired me, like Cezanne and Manet... that complete losing of oneself in the work to such an extent that the work itself... felt as if a living organism was posited there on the canvas, on this surface... That's truly... the act of creation.

  Philip Guston

  Past, Cezanne, Losing

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• 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.

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• 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

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• It's not just a boring exercise in pushing oil paint around a canvas. It's a way of opening a threshold to an exciting new world of vision.

  Nelson Shanks

  Exercise, Oil, Boredom

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• 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

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• I usually start by doing one or more color studies of the subject on a piece of canvas taped to cardboard.

  Mary Beth McKenzie

  Color, Pieces, Study

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• You should treat your body like a canvas.

  Theophilus London

  Body, Should, Treats

  Interview with Sowmya Krishnamurthy, www.askmen.com.

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• Each solstice is a domain of experience unto itself. At the Summer Solstice, all is green and growing, potential coming into being, the miracle of manifestation painted large on the canvas of awareness. At the Winter Solstice, the wind is cold, trees are bare and all lies in stillness beneath blankets of snow.

  Gary Zukav

  Summer, Lying, Winter

  "Twin Miracles" by Gary Zukav, www.huffingtonpost.com. December 19, 2012.

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• The great difficulty with large canvases is that they should by right be painted as fast as a sketch. By speed only can you gain an appearance of fleeting effect. But to paint a three yard canvas with the same dispatch as one of ten inches is well-nigh impossible.

  Joaquin Sorolla

  Fleeting, Gains, Yards

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• I've started to experiment [in the studio] with texturing the canvas, building up the surface with large brushes, palette knife or fingers. I want to say more in my art.

  T. Allen Lawson

  Art, Building Up, Knives

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• Subject becoming less relevant, each painting having a life of its own, each stroke leading to the next. It is more about the connection of body and spirit to canvas, over mind to canvas.

  Ken Gillespie

  Mind, Connections, Body

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• 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

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

  Kenny Florian

  Mma, Excited, Blank

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• La volaille est pour la cuisine ce qu'est la toile pour les peintres. Fowls are to the kitchen what his canvas is to the painter.

  Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

  Kitchen, Fowl, Cuisine

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• 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

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• 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

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• The English mist is always at work like a subtle painter, and London is a vast canvas prepared for the mist to work on.

  Arthur Symons

  London, Mist, Subtle

  Arthur Symons (1998). “Cities and Sea-Coasts and Islands”, p.162, Northwestern University Press

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• 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

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• I am glad you encouraged me with the 'Stoke' [his painting 'Stoke-by-Nayland', circa 1835] What say you to a summer morning? July or August, at eight or nine o'clock, after a slight shower during the night, to enhance the dews in the shadowed part of the picture, under 'Hedge row elms and hillocks green.' Then the plough, cart, horse, gate, cows, donkey, &c. are all good paintable material for the foreground, and the size of the canvas sufficient to try one's strength, and keep one at full collar.

  John Constable

  Summer, Morning, Horse

  "Constable". Book by Leslie Parris and Ian Fleming-Williams, Tate Gallery Publications, London, p. 380, Letter to William Purton (6 February 1836), 1993.

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• As ships becalmed at eve, that lay With canvas drooping, side by side, Two towers of sail, at dawn of day Are scarce, long leagues apart, descried.

  Arthur Hugh Clough

  Two, Long, League

  'Qua Curam Ventus' (1849)

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• My canvas soothes me into forgetfulness of the scene of turmoil and folly - and worse - of the scene around me. Every gleam of sunshine is blighted to me in the art at least. Can it therefore be wondered at that I paint continual storms? "Tempest o'er tempest roll'd" - still the "darkness" is majestic.

  John Constable

  Art, Sunshine, Darkness

  Letter to C.R. Leslie (1834), "John Constable's Correspondence," ed. R.B. Beckett, vol. 3, p. 122, 1962-1970.

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