Vincent Van Gogh Quotes About Painting

Quotes about: Painting

• If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Inspirational, Motivational, Positive

• When I have a terrible need of - shall I say the word - religion. Then I go out and paint the stars.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Nature, Stars, Ignorance

  Letter to Theo van Gogh, from Arles, September 29, 1888. "An Examined Faith: Social Context and Religious Commitment" by James Luther Adams and George K. Beach, p. 259, 1991.

• 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.

• Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me. I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest corners. And my mind is driven towards these things with an irresistible momentum.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Music, Drawing, Mind

  Letter to Theo from The Hague, July 21, 1882.

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

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Art, Passion, Alive

• I've just kept on ceaselessly painting in order to learn painting.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Order, Painting

• I want to touch people with my art. I want them to say "he feels deeply, he feels tenderly".

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Art, People, Want

• I can't change the fact that my paintings don't sell. But the time will come when people will recognize that they are worth more than the value of the paints used in the picture.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  People, Facts, Painting

  Vincent van Gogh (1987). “Vincent Van Gogh, 1853-1890: Vision and Reality”, Gloucester

• Christ alone, of all the philosophers, magicians, etc., has affirmed eternal life as the most important certainty, the infinity of time, the futility of death, the necessity and purpose of serenity and devotion. He lived serenely, as an artist greater than all other artists, scorning marble and clay and paint, working in the living flesh. In other words, this peerless artist, scarcely conceivable with the blunt instrument of our modern, nervous and obtuse brains, made neither statues nor paintings nor books. He maintained in no uncertain terms that he made ... living men, immortals.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Book, Artist, Men

• Painting is a faith, and it imposes the duty to disregard public opinion.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Faith, Art, Public Opinion

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

• All art is a gift. It is first of all a gift that the maker can do it. It is then a gift to someone else, whether they pay for it or not. The wonder of it is that we cannot get the production of these gifts stopped. Art is life seeking itself. It is our intractable expressions of love for the beauties, ideas and epiphanies we regularly find. I framed the painting. It's now hanging in our den. "I have walked this earth for 30 years, and, out of gratitude, want to leave some souvenir.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Gratitude, Art, Years

• I experience a period of frightening clarity in those moments when nature is so beautiful. I am no longer sure of myself, and the paintings appear as in a dream.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Beautiful, Dream, Scary

  Vincent van Gogh (1987). “Vincent Van Gogh, 1853-1890: Vision and Reality”, Gloucester

• I must continue to follow the path I take now. If I do nothing, if I study nothing, if I cease searching, then, woe is me, I am lost. That is how I look at it — keep going, keep going come what may. But what is your final goal, you may ask. That goal will become clearer, will emerge slowly but surely, much as the rough draught turns into a sketch, and the sketch into a painting through the serious work done on it, through the elaboration of the original vague idea and through the consolidation of the first fleeting and passing thought.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Woe Is Me, Ideas, Goal

  Letter to Theo van Gogh from Cuesmes, www.webexhibits.org. July 1880.

• Paintings have a life of their own that derives from the painter's soul.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Artist, Soul, Painting

• What I need is courage, and this often fails me. And it is also a fact that since my disease, when I am in the fields I am overwhelmed by a feeling of loneliness to such a horrible extent that I shy away from going out. But this will change all the same as time goes on. Only when I stand a painting before my easel do I feel somewhat alive. Never mind, this is going to change too, for now my health is so good that I suppose the physical part of me will gain the victory.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Loneliness, Feelings, Mind

  Vincent van Gogh, Martin Bailey (1990). “Van Gogh, letters from Provence”, Clarkson N Potter Publishers

• But what's your ultimate goal, you'll say. That goal will become clearer, will take shape slowly and surely, as the croquis becomes a sketch and the sketch a painting, as one works more seriously, as one digs deeper into the originally vague idea, the first fugitive, passing thought, unless it becomes firm.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Ideas, Goal, Shapes

  Vincent van Gogh (2009). “Saint-Rémy-de-Provence - Auvers-sur-Oise, 1889-1890, [772-902]”

• I lost my job as an art salesman. It was the customer's fault. He wanted to buy the wrong paintings.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Art, Jobs, Faults

• Painting is like having a bad mistress who spends and spends and it's never enough ... I tell myself that even if a tolerable study comes out of it from time to time, it would have been cheaper to buy it from somebody else.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Mistress, Study, Painting

  James Smith, Vincent van Gogh (2001). “Essential Van Gogh”, Parragon Incorporated

• l can do very well without God both in my life and in my painting, but l cannot, ill as I am, do without something which is greater than l, which is my life — the power to create.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Artist, Suffering, Atheism

  "The Drawings of Van Gogh".

• The world concerns me only in so far as I have a certain debt and duty to it, because I have lived in it for thirty years and owe to it to leave behind some souvenir in the shape of drawings and paintings – not done to please any particular movement, but within which a genuine human sentiment is expressed.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Years, Drawing, Done

• I am working with the enthusiasm of a man from Marseilles eating bouillabaisse, which shouldn't come as a surprise to you because I am busy painting huge sunflowers.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Men, Sunflower, Enthusiasm

• I always dream a painting like that, with a group of lively figures of the pals.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Dream, Groups, Pals

• Painting is a faith and that it brings with it the duty to pay no heed to public opinion - and that in it one conquers by perseverance and not by giving in.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Perseverance, Giving, Public Opinion

• A good painting should be the equivalent of a good deed.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Deeds, Painting, Should

• Painting as it is now promises to become more subtle - more like music and less like sculpture - and above all it promises color. If only it keeps this promise.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Art, Color, Promise

  Vincent van Gogh (2014). “Delphi Complete Works of Vincent van Gogh (Illustrated)”, p.2871, Delphi Classics

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