Painter Quotes - Page 15

• Poets like painters, thus unskilled to trace The naked nature and the living grace, With gold and jewels cover ev'ry part, And hide with ornaments their want of art. True wit is Nature to advantage dressed, What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed.

  Alexander Pope

  Art, Jewels, Grace

  An Essay on Criticism l. 297 (1711)

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• I went to school for fine art. I'm a decent housepainter, but I'm a really good fine art painter.

  Kristin Bauer van Straten

  Art, School, Fine

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• All inspired painters are impressionists, even though it be true that some impressionists are not inspired.

  Joaquin Sorolla

  Inspired, Being True, Impressionism

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• I hate darkness. Claude Monet once said that painting in general did not have light enough in it. I agree with him. We painters, however, can never reproduce sunlight as it really is. I can only approach the truth of it.

  Joaquin Sorolla

  Hate, Light, Darkness

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• When an artist begins to count strokes instead of regarding nature he is lost. This preoccupation with technique, at the expense of truth and sincerity, is the principal fault I find in much of the work of modern painters.

  Joaquin Sorolla

  Artist, Technique, Faults

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• I am interested in study, reflection, philosophy - but always as a dilettante. I also consider myself a dilettante as a painter.

  Antoni Tapies

  Philosophy, Reflection, Study

  "Antoni Tapies". UNESCO Courier, June 1994.

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• Painters are amongst the priests - worker priests of the cult of man - searching to understand but never know.

  Brice Marden

  Men, Priests, Cult

  Brice Marden (1978). “Brice Marden: Recent Paintings and Drawings : [catalogue of an Exhibition], September 23-21 October 1978, The Pace Gallery, New York”

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• It has always been difficult for historians to fully grasp the intelligence of painters.

  Dore Ashton

  Difficult, Intellect, Historian

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• The... promptitude with which many painters, on arriving at an entirely new and unfamiliar place, settle down to work at once, never fails to astonish me: it seems indecent, like button-holing a complete stranger.

  Augustus John

  Buttons, Arriving, Failing

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• One thing about being a painter is that if you have a dog you are naturally going to spend a lot of time with him or her. It has always amazed me the closeness of that relationship even though a word was never spoken, intellect not any part of it.

  Ken Gillespie

  Dog, Intellect, Amazed

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• The poet and the painter are only truly great by the mutual influences of their studies, and the jealousy of glory has only produced an idle contest.

  Isaac D'Israeli

  Study, Influence, Glory

  "The Literary Character, Illustrated by the History of Men of Genius". Book by Isaac D'Israeli, en.wikiquote.org. 1795 - 1822.

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• The canvas has an idiotic stare and mesmerises some painters so much that they turn into idiots themselves.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Canvas, Idiot, Staring

  Vincent van Gogh (2014). “Delphi Complete Works of Vincent van Gogh (Illustrated)”, p.2333, Delphi Classics

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• I had no natural gift to be anything - not an athlete, not an actor, not a writer, not a director, a painter of garden porches - not anything. So I've worked really hard, because nothing ever came easily to me.

  Paul Newman

  Athlete, Garden, Directors

  The Daily News, June 10, 1991.

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• Decade after decade, artists came to paint the light of Provincetown, and comparisons were made to the lagoons of Venice and the marshes of Holland, but then the summer ended and most of the painters left, and the long dingy undergarment of the gray New England winter, gray as the spirit of my mood, came down to visit.

  Norman Mailer

  Summer, Winter, Artist

  Norman Mailer (2013). “Tough Guys Don't Dance: A Novel”, p.11, Random House

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• Painters and sculptors under the Nazis often depicted the nude, but they were forbidden to show any bodily imperfections. Their nudes look like pictures in physique magazines: pinups which are both sanctimoniously asexual and (in a technical sense) pornographic, for they have the perfection of a fantasy.

  Susan Sontag

  Perfection, Looks, Magazines

  Susan Sontag (1983). “A Susan Sontag reader”, Vintage

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• It is impossible to repeat in one period what was done in another.The pointof view isnotthesame, anymorethan are the tools, the ideals, the needs, or the painters' techniques.

  Pierre-Auguste Renoir

  Views, Technique, Needs

  FromRenoir's notebook, quoted in L Nochlin Impressionism and Post-Impressionism1874-1904 (1966).

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• You haven't time to think about the composition. In working directly from nature, the painter ends up by simply aiming at an effect, and not composing the picture at all; and he soon becomes monotonous.

  Pierre-Auguste Renoir

  Thinking, Ends, Composing

  "Renoir: His Life and Work". Book by François Fosca, p. 176, 1975.

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• Painters tend to ignore the challenges and thrills that sculptors enjoy daily - volume... like the perfect, imperfect voluminous oval of the egg.

  Sara Genn

  Eggs, Perfect, Challenges

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• As a painter, I realized that what we see is just manifestation of unseen power. Since then [1958 Coup in Iraq], reality started to take another form in my mind. Hence, I was aware of deception of our senses.

  Ala Bashir

  Reality, Iraq, Mind

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• Sets of lines can say something about the direction and nature of the light. They are used by great fresco painters as a sign for shade.

  John French Sloan

  Light, Lines, Shade

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• I'm an ambitious self-publicist out of necessity. I've never been one to miss an opportunity because I've never had any illusions about how hard it is to survive as a painter... It's been an extra driving force to be able to prove the sceptics wrong.

  Stuart Pearson Wright

  Opportunity, Self, Missing

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• Painters love paint itself: so much that they spend years trying to get paint to behave the way they want it to.

  James Elkins

  Years, Trying, Want

  James Elkins (2004). “What Painting Is”, p.187, Routledge

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• At concerts, for me, the orchestra was like a painter. It flooded me with all the colours of the rainbow. If the violin came in by itself, I was suddenly filled with gold and fire, and with red so bright I could not remember having seen it on any object.

  James Elkins

  Music, Fire, Rainbow

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• As the decades go by, a painter's life becomes a life lived with oil paint, a story told in the thicknesses of oil. Any history of painting that does not take that obsession seriously is incomplete.

  James Elkins

  Oil, Doe, Stories

  James Elkins (2004). “What Painting Is”, p.5, Routledge

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• The muddy moods of oil paints are the painter's muddy humors, and its brilliant transformations are the painter's unexpected discoveries.

  James Elkins

  Oil, Discovery, Brilliant

  James Elkins (2004). “What Painting Is”, p.5, Routledge

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