Materials Quotes - Page 5

• I wanted to create a kind of substance by means of brush-work. But that is the kind of discovery which one makes gradually... Thus it was that I subsequently began to introduce sand, sawdust and metal filings into my pictures.

  Georges Braque

  Mean, Discovery, Substance

  "Cahiers d'Art" by Dora Vallier, p. 76, 1954.

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• The artist yields often to the stimuli of materials that will transmit his spirit.

  Odilon Redon

  Artist, Yield, Spirit

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• Paint with whatever material you please - with pipes, postage stamps, postcards or playing cards, painted paper, or newspapers.

  Guillaume Apollinaire

  Cards, Paper, Paint

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• When mountains and waters are painted, blue, green, and red paints are used, strange rocks and wondrous stones are used, the four jewels and the seven treasures are used. Rice-cakes are painted in the same manner. When a person is painted, the four great elements and five skandhas are used.

  Dogen

  Jewels, Cake, Rocks

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• When we speak of the perfection of art, we must recollect what the materials are with which a painter contends with nature. For the light of the sun he has but patent yellow and white lead - for the darkest shade, umber or soot.

  John Constable

  Art, Light, Yellow

  John Constable (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of John Constable (Illustrated)”, p.587, Delphi Classics

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• It is vain for painters... to endeavour to invent without materials on which the mind may work.

  Joshua Reynolds

  Mind, May, Vain

  Sir Joshua Reynolds, Edmond Malone (1809). “The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds”, p.158

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• There can be no doubt but that he who has the most materials has the greatest means of invention.

  Joshua Reynolds

  Mean, Doubt, Invention

  Sir Joshua Reynolds, Edmond Malone (1809). “The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds”, p.159

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• We must remember that everything depends on how we use a material, not on the material itself... New materials are not necessarily superior. Each material is only what we make it.

  Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

  Use, Remember, Depends

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• Understanding the materials I work with... gives me a deeper understanding of my place. And it's helped me make sense of the changes that are happening to me as I grow older.

  Andy Goldsworthy

  Giving, Understanding, Grows

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• Painting is so much more than the materials.

  Brian Johnson

  Painting

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• Anything is good painting material once you get to know it.

  David Milne

  Painting, Knows

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• A canvas is never empty.

  Robert Rauschenberg

  Canvas, Empty

  Branden Wayne Joseph, Robert Rauschenberg (2003). “Random Order: Robert Rauschenberg and the Neo-avant-garde”, p.21, MIT Press

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• It is the custom of Venice to paint on canvas, either because it does not split and is not worm-eaten, or because pictures can be made of any size desired, or else for convenience... so that they can be sent anywhere with very little trouble and expense.

  Giorgio Vasari

  Venice, Splits, Littles

  Giorgio Vasari (1963). “The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors, and Architects”, London : Dent ; New York : Dutton

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• Swing a bigger brush - you don't know what you're missing.

  Charles Webster Hawthorne

  Swings, Missing, Champagne

  Richard Mühlberger, Charles Webster Hawthorne (1999). “Charles Webster Hawthorne”, University of Washington Press

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• With materialization in play you have magic in your fingers and you become the wizard.

  Robert Genn

  Play, Magic, Wizards

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• One is constantly reminded of the infinite lavishness and fertility of Nature-inexhaustible abundance amid what seems enormous waste. And yet when we look into any of her operations that lie within reach of our minds, we learn that no particle of her material is wasted or worn out. It is eternally flowing from use to use, beauty to yet higher beauty; and we soon cease to lament waste and death, and rather rejoice and exult in the imperishable, unspendable wealth of the universe.

  John Muir

  Nature, Lying, Learning

  John Muir (1997). “Nature Writings: The Story of My Boyhood and Youth, My First Summer in the Sierra, the Mountains of California, Stickeen, Selected Essays”, p.296, Library of America

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• I used anything, various materials; this is wood, and this is mixed up clay, wedged together, clay with glazes and stuff like that.

  Joe Fafard

  Together, Clay, Woods

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• The highest wisdom adopts the humblest of bodies.

  Antoni Tapies

  Body, Highest

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• I work with things left over from other things.

  Julian Schnabel

  Left

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• Art happens when anyone in the world takes any kind of material and fashions it into a deliberate statement.

  Thomas Hoving

  Fashion, Art, World

  Thomas Hoving (2011). “Art For Dummies”, p.38, John Wiley & Sons

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• Don't be stingy with your paint, it isn't worth it.

  John French Sloan

  Paint, Stingy, Worth It

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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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• Water and stones. Those are the unpromising ingredients of two very different endeavors... painting, because artists' pigments are made from fluids... mixed together with powdered stones to give color... and the other is alchemy, the stone the ultimate goal.

  James Elkins

  Artist, Color, Two

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• The materials I use are absolutely essential to the work I make.

  David Batchelor

  Essentials, Use

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• I was working with mud and photographs and thread, eyelashes, carrots and acetone... I was throwing radios off buildings and... remember floating styrofoam commas down the Milwaukee River.

  William Wegman

  Eyelashes, Rivers, Floating

  William Wegman, Frédéric Paul, Fonds régional d'art contemporain Limousin (1993). “William Wegman, l'oeuvre photographique”, Frac Limousin

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