Painting Quotes - Page 17

• Nothing is so improving to the temper as the study of the beauties either of poetry, eloquence, music, or painting.

  David Hume

  Taste, Study, Temper

  David Hume (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of David Hume (Illustrated)”, p.579, Delphi Classics

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• One of the marks of true genius is a quality of abundance. A rich, rollicking abundance, enough to give indigestion to ordinary people. Great artists turn it out in rolls, in swatches. They cover whole ceilings with paintings, they chip out a mountainside in stone, they write not one novel but a shelf full. It follows that some of their work is better than other. As much as a third of it may be pretty bad. Shall we say this unevenness is the mark of their humanity - of their proud mortality as well as of their immortality?

  Catherine Drinker Bowen

  Writing, Artist, People

  Catherine Drinker Bowen (1961). “The Nature of the Artist: An Address Delivered at the Dedication Ceremonies for Lee Pattison Recital Hall, Wilbur Hall, Mary Kimberly Residence Hall”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I can always paint very well with my eyes, but with my hands it doesn't always work out.

  Kathe Kollwitz

  Eye, Hands, Work Out

  36 Copy quote

• Unlike music or poetry or painting, food rouses no response in passionate and emotional youth. Only when the surge of the blood is quieted does gastronomy come into its own with philosophy and theology and the sterner delights of the mind.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Philosophy, Food, Emotional

  Dorothy L Sayers (2009). “The Documents in the Case”, p.39, Hachette UK

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Sometimes I could quit paint and take to charring. It must be fine to clean perfectly, to shine and polish and know that it could not be done better. In painting that never occurs.

  Emily Carr

  Perfection, Shining, Done

  Emily Carr (2009). “Hundreds and Thousands: The Journals of Emily Carr”, p.92, D & M Publishers

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• What a conception of art must those theorists have who exclude portraits from the proper province of the fine arts! It is exactly as if we denied that to be poetry in which the poet celebrates the woman he really loves. Portraiture is the basis and the touchstone of historic painting.

  August Wilhelm von Schlegel

  Art, Portraits, Portraiture

  8 Copy quote

• (Canada) - the most parochial nationette on earth ... I have been living in this sanctimonious icebox ... painting portraits of the opulent Methodists of Toronto. Methodism and money in this city have produced a sort of hell of dullness.

  Wyndham Lewis

  Cities, Canada, Portraits

  18 Copy quote

• Painting is so difficult that I would give it up if it were not so enjoyable.

  William McGregor Paxton

  Giving, Difficult, Enjoyable

  5 Copy quote

• Painting is my vehicle of transit. I don't always know where I am going or what it means.

  Leonora Carrington

  Mean, Vehicle, Knows

  32 Copy quote

• The ephemeral nature of live performance is the part I love most - it's a monk's sand painting, carefully constructed, then wiped away in an instant.

  Rosanne Cash

  Ephemeral, Sand, Monk

  Rosanne Cash (2010). “Composed: A Memoir”, p.133, Penguin

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have never expected anything from my work but the satisfaction I could get from it by the very fact of painting and saying what I couldn't say otherwise.

  Frida Kahlo

  Art, Work, Satisfaction

  Frida Kahlo (1995). “The Letters of Frida Kahlo: Cartas Apasionadas”, Chronicle Books Llc

  28 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are pictures by Titian so steeped in golden splendors, that they look as if they would light up a dark room like a solar lamp.

  George Stillman Hillard

  Dark, Light, Rooms

  George Stillman Hillard (1854). “Six Months in Italy”, p.52

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The drama embraces and applies all the beauties and decorations of poetry. The sister arts attend and adorn it. Painting, architecture, and music are her handmaids. The costliest lights of a people's intellect burn at her show. All ages welcome her.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Art, Drama, Light

  Robert Aris Willmott (1866). “Pleasures, Objects, and Advantages of Literature”, p.87

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I get inspiration from things that have nothing to do with painting: caricature, items from newspapers, sights in the street, proverbs, nursery-rhymes, children's games and songs, nightmares, desires, terrors. ... That question [why do you paint?] has been put to me before and my answer was, 'To give terror a face.' But it's more than that. I paint because I can't help it.

  Paula Rego

  Song, Art, Children

  John McEwen, Paula Rego (1992). “Paula Rego”

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• If you're going to be a visual artist, then there has to be something in the work that accounts for the possibility of the invisible, the opposite of the visual experience. That's why it's not like a table or a car or something. I think that that might even be hard for people because most of our visual experiences are of tables. It has no business being anything else but a table. But a painting or a sculpture really exists somewhere between itself, what it is, and what it is not-you know, the very thing. And how the artist engineers or manages that is the question.

  Richard Tuttle

  Thinking, Artist, Opposites

  "Drawing & Exhibitions: Richard Tuttle". Art21 Interview, art21.org. September 2005.

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• Used to be, conservatives revered the Average American, that Norman Rockwell oil painting of diner food, humble faith, honest toil, and Capraesque virtue.

  James Wolcott

  Humble, Oil Painting, Average

  6 Copy quote

• If it hurt me to have to give up a painting I figured it had to hurt them to write the check. That's how I came up with the price for my work.

  Keariene Muizz

  Hurt, Giving Up, Writing

  Interview with John Rogers, 2008.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When we look at a painting, listen to a piece of music, read a novel, or watch a movie we are taking in the artist's composition. The composition is the totality of the work.

  Mike Svob

  Artist, Watches, Looks

  9 Copy quote

• All art is probably erotic in its ultimate character, but painting more than anything else is a purely nervous erotic activity.

  Patrick Swift

  Art, Character, Erotic

  "Some Notes on Caravaggio". "Nimbus" Magazine, 1956.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Art, if it is successful in the task of questioning reality, if it is good painting and not merely a performance of dexterity, will be an affirmation of God.

  Patrick Swift

  Art, Successful, Reality

  Patrick Swift (1993). “PS -- of Course: Patrick Swift, 1927-1983”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Most artists never get a chance to be Picasso, but that doesn't mean you would stop painting.

  Teddy Thompson

  Mean, Artist, Chance

  4 Copy quote

• There's a spectrum of possibilities. You can underline the bass, or not at all. You can create something that is well-anchored or that is floating and never arriving. You can make a melodic line dominant or barely visible. The conducting gesture is akin to painting or sculpture.

  Laurence Equilbey

  Lines, Gestures, Bass

  "There Will Be Joy". Interview with Laurence Equilbey, logger.believermag.com. There Will Be Joy.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Everybody's creative. We create our songs and our paintings, our families and our children. Every one of us is on the cutting edge of the future.

  Buffy Sainte-Marie

  Song, Children, Cutting

  Source: www.motherjones.com

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• It's like painting the same blank canvas over and over and over and over and over. Once the concept is known, you don't need to see two. And that was in the back of my head, that I was really done artistically with what I had created or pastiched.

  Steve Martin

  Two, Needs, Done

  Source: bolstablog.wordpress.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It's not fiction's job to be photographically representative of reality. If I want to make a fictional world where there's no kindness, this doesn't mean I believe there's no kindness in the real world. In fact, what it may mean is that I very much value kindness. Like if you make a painting in which only greens are allowed, it wouldn't mean you don't believe in blue.

  George Saunders

  Jobs, Kindness, Real

  4 Copy quote