Painting Quotes

• I dream of painting and then I paint my dream.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Inspirational, Education, Dream

  "Marry Your Muse: Making a Lasting Commitment to Your Creativity". Book by Jan Phillips, 1997.

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• Nature is painting for us, day after day, pictures of infinite beauty.

  John Ruskin

  Appreciation, Nature, Sunset

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• The only time I feel alive is when I'm painting.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Art, Passion, Alive

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• Abstract painting is abstract. It confronts you.

  Jackson Pollock

  Abstract Painting, Compliment, Expressionism

  Quoted in FrancisVO'Connor Jackson Pollock (1967).

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• Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Art, Creativity, Drawing

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  A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.

  Michelangelo

  Art, Pain, Inspiration

  Michelangelo Buonarroti (1913). “Michelangelo: A Record of His Life as Told in His Own Letters and Papers”

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• If you could say it in words there would be no reason to paint.

  Edward Hopper

  Art, Creative, Would Be

  Ray Spangenburg, Kit Moser, Edward Hopper, Diane Moser (2002). “Edward Hopper: The Life of an Artist”, Enslow Pub Incorporated

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• Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks.

  Plutarch

  Art, Poetry, Greek

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• It is not about painting life, it is about making painting alive.

  Paul Cezanne

  Alive

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• Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Inspirational, Life, Beautiful

  Henry Ward Beecher (1868). “Norwood: Or, Village Life in New England”, p.69

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• A painting is not a picture of an experience, but is the experience.

  Mark Rothko

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• Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is.

  Jackson Pollock

  Art, Discovery, Self

  Elizabeth Frank, Jackson Pollock (1983). “Jackson Pollock”, Abbeville Pr

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• When you start a painting, it is somewhat outside you. At the conclusion, you seem to move inside the painting.

  Fernando Botero

  Art, Moving, Conclusion

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• Painting completed my life.

  Frida Kahlo

  Art, Happy Friday, Artist

  Christina Burrus, Frida Kahlo (2008). “Frida Kahlo: 'I Paint My Reality'”

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• The world today doesn't make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do?

  Pablo Picasso

  Music, Art, World

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• Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.

  Thomas Merton

  Art, Fools Day, Finding Yourself

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.35, Shambhala Publications

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• Painting is easy when you don't know how, but very difficult when you do.

  Edgar Degas

  Art, Experience, Easy

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• Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.

  Pablo Picasso

  Life, Art, Expression

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

  Sara Genn

  Writing, Order, Paint

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• There are so many good ones to paint and if you paint as well as you really can and keep out of all other things and do that, it is the true thing.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Wells, True Things, Ifs

  Ernest Hemingway (1970). “Islands in the stream”, Scribner Book Company

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• If it is the love of that which your work represents--if, being a landscape painter, it is love of hills and trees that moves you--if, being a figure painter, it is love of human beauty, and human soul that moves you--if, being a flower or animal painter, it is love, and wonder, and delight in petal and in limb that move you, then the Spirit is upon you, and the earth is yours, and the fullness thereof.

  John Ruskin

  Flower, Moving, Animal

  John Ruskin, Cook (1905). “Works”

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• I am anxious that the world should be inclined to look to painters for information about painting.

  John Constable

  Looks, World, Information

  John Constable (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of John Constable (Illustrated)”, p.584, Delphi Classics

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• I wanted to make sure the last chapters of my life were full, and painting, it turns out, has helped occupy not only space but opened my mind.

  George W. Bush

  Space, Mind, Lasts

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• Painting is... a richer language than words... Painting operates through signs which are not abstract and incorporeal like words. The signs of painting are much closer to the objects themselves.

  Jean Dubuffet

  Language, Abstract, Objects

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• The aim of the painting is that the eye should find out what it likes.

  Marion Milner

  Eye, Likes, Should

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