Painter Quotes

• My mother said to me, 'If you are a soldier, you will become a general. If you are a monk, you will become the Pope.' Instead, I was a painter, and became Picasso.

  Pablo Picasso

  Confidence, Mother, Encouragement

  "Life with Picasso" by François Gilot, (p. 60), 1964.

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• Who sees the human face correctly: the photographer, the mirror, or the painter?

  Pablo Picasso

  Photography, Art, Mirrors

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• Every good painter paints what he is.

  Jackson Pollock

  Art, Paint, Artist

  Jackson Pollock, Bernice Rose, Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.) (1980). “Jackson Pollock, drawing into painting”, Icon

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• It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academicism.

  Mark Rothko

  Artist, Essence, Long

  Mark Rothko, Miguel López-Remiro (2006). “Writings on Art”, p.36, Yale University Press

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• Don't worry about mistakes. Making things out of mistakes, that's creativity.

  Peter Max

  Inspirational, Mistake, Creativity

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• In fact, whatever exists in the universe, in essence, in appearance, in the imagination, the painter has first in his mind and then in his hands ... it lies in his power to create them . . .

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Art, Lying, Hands

  Leonardo da Vinci (2008). “Notebooks”, p.185, OUP Oxford

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• When art critics get together they talk about Form and Structure and Meaning. When artists get together they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine.

  Pablo Picasso

  Art, Criticism, Together

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• Art is art. Everything else is everything else.

  Ad Reinhardt

  Art, Avant Garde, Simplify

  Ad Reinhardt, Marlborough Gallery (1970). “Ad Reinhardt: black paintings, 1951-1967”

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• A young painter who cannot liberate himself from the influence of past generations is digging his own grave.

  Henri Matisse

  Inspirational, Past, Digging

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• I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.

  Claude Monet

  Art, Nature, Flower

  Claire Joyes, Claude Monet (1975). “Monet at Giverny”, Wh Smith Pub

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• If we don't have a sense of humor, we lack a sense of perspective

  Wayne Thiebaud

  Humor, Perspective, Famous Artist

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• When a type design is good it is not because each individual letter of the alphabet is perfect in form, but because there is a feeling of harmony and unbroken rhythm that runs through the whole design, each letter kin to every other and to all.

  Frederic Goudy

  Running, Perfect, Design

  Frederic William Goudy (1940). “Typologia: Studies in Type Design & Type Making, with Comments on the Invention of Typography, the First Types, Legibility, and Fine Printing”, p.43, Univ of California Press

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• A kiss from my mother made me a painter.

  Benjamin West

  Mother, Son, Kissing

  "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations". Compiled by Jehiel Keeler Hoyt and Kate Louise Roberts, 1922.

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• Everything you can imagine is real.

  Pablo Picasso

  Inspirational, Meaningful, Art

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• What does it mean for a painter to paint in the manner of So-and-So or to actually imitate someone else? What's wrong with that? On the contrary, it's a good idea. You should constantly try to paint like someone else. But the thing is, you can't! You would like to. You try. But it turns out to be a botch... And it's at the very moment you make a botch of it that you're yourself.

  Pablo Picasso

  Mean, Ideas, Trying

  Hélène Parmelin, Pablo Picasso (1965). “Picasso; the artist and his model: and other recent works”

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• The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity.

  Alberto Giacometti

  Inspirational, Motivational, Photography

  Herbert C. Lust, Alberto Giacometti, Aprile Gallant, Portland Museum of Art (2000). “Alberto Giacometti”

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• The good painter is the one who buries a color every day.

  Roger Bissiere

  Color

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• Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment.

  Claude Monet

  Motivational, Art, Color

  Claude Monet (1969). “Claude Monet”

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• There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into sun

  Pablo Picasso

  Inspiring, Wisdom, Art

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• At a certain moment the canvas began to appear to one American painter after another as an arena in which to act-rather than as a space in which to reproduce, re-design, analyze or express an object, actual or imagined. What was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event.

  Harold Rosenberg

  Space, Design, Events

  "The American Action Painter," Art News, Dec. 1952

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• The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.

  Francis Bacon

  Life, Beauty, Beautiful

  "ELAC’s VPAM: A Game Changer for L.A. Art Scene" by Max Benavidez, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 25, 2011.

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• I don't say everything, but I paint everything.

  Pablo Picasso

  Art, Paint, Cubism

  Pablo Picasso (2001). “Picasso érotique”, Prestel Pub

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• To have read the greatest works of any great poet, to have beheld or heard the greatest works of any great painter or musician, is a possession added to the best things of life.

  Algernon Charles Swinburne

  Greatness, Musician, Poet

  Algernon Charles Swinburne (1875). “Essays and Studies”, p.59, Chatto & Windus

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• 

  Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.

  Pablo Picasso

  Inspirational, Motivational, Leadership

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

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• The painter's obsession with his subject is all that he needs to drive him to work.

  Lucian Freud

  Artist, Needs, Obsession

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