Paint Quotes - Page 37

• When I was thirteen or fourteen I bought a paintbox with oil paints from money slowly saved up. The feeling I had at the time - or better - the experience of color coming slowly out of the tube - is with me to this day.

  Wassily Kandinsky

  Color, Oil, Feelings

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• The word compositon moved me spiritually and I made it my aim in life to paint a composition. It affected me like a prayer and filled me with awe.

  Wassily Kandinsky

  Prayer, Made, Aim

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• When Picasso paints as a cubist, putting one tone next to another, the arrangement of planes is fine and the results very storng. But those who imitate him achieve nothing worthwhile.

  Aristide Maillol

  Next, Tone, Imitation

  "Artists on Art, from the 14 to 20 Centuries". Book edited by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves, p. 407, 1972.

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• My son's a painter. All through school his teachers tell him he's a genius. I tell him to paint me an apple that looks like an apple before he paints me one that doesn't. Go where you can go, but start from someplace recognizable.

  Charles Mingus

  Teacher, School, Son

  Charles Mingus' statement in Mainliner Magazine (July 1977); later quoted in Olivia Bertagnolli "Creativity and the writing process" (p. 182), 1982.

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• Some people try to paint in my style. Some simply sell pirated copies of my work. Some claim to be my publisher or agent or even my exclusive representative, when they are not.

  LeRoy Neiman

  People, Style, Trying

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• When I paint, I seriously consider the public presence of a person - the surface facade. I am less concerned with how people look when they wake up or how they act at home. A person's public presence reflects his own efforts at image development.

  LeRoy Neiman

  Home, People, Effort

  LeRoy Neiman (1974). “Art & lifestyle”

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• With a brush you have control. The paint goes on the brush and you make the mark. From experience you know exactly what will happen. With the squeegee you lose control.

  Gerhard Richter

  Goes On, Brushes, Mark

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• The reason for my painting large canvases is that I want to be intimate and human. To paint a small picture is to place yourself outside your experience, to look upon an experience as a stereopticon view or with a reducing glass. However you paint the larger picture, you are in it. It isn't something you command.

  Mark Rothko

  Glasses, Views, Looks

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• Throw away those little pieces of paper. Get yourself a big, beautiful canvas. Bring from this nature the most beautiful colors. Find the serene scene within. Find the joy in each corner of your life. Sit still and feel what is within you. Sit still and paint like you have never painted before.

  Prem Rawat

  Beautiful, Color, Joy

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• I think that in the last twenty years or so, there's been a new kind of honesty in painting where painters have been very proud of paint and have let it behave openly.

  Robert Rauschenberg

  Honesty, Thinking, Years

  "Oral history interview with Robert Rauschenberg". Interview with Dorothy Seckler, www.aaa.si.edu. December 21, 1965.

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• I always get into arguments with people who want to retain the old values in painting - the humanistic values that they always find on the canvas. If you pin them down, they always end up asserting that there is something there besides the paint on the canvas. My painting is based on the fact that only what can be seen there is there... What you see is what you see.

  Frank Stella

  People, Want, Facts

  "Questions to Stella and Judd". Interview with Bruce Glaser, www.artnews.com. September 1966.

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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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• I am a commercial artist because I paint to earn a living. We who earn money from what we produce are all commercial artists.

  Jack White

  Artist, Produce, Commerce

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• The true professional makes art when he is not feeling good, if the studio is too cold or too warm or the walls are falling down. We are painters and we paint. If I were a sculptor, I'd sculpt.

  Jack White

  Art, Wall, Fall

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• I do not like to be a prophet. I like better to paint than to predict what the next painters will do. Though I have a feeling that consideration of order is very much in the air.

  Josef Albers

  Art, Air, Order

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• Paint with freedom. It gives you more mastery of the nature of paint.

  Charles Webster Hawthorne

  Freedom, Giving, Mastery

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

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• Avoid distant views, paint objects close up. If the foreground is well done the distance will take care of itself.

  Charles Webster Hawthorne

  Distance, Views, Done

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

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• If I don't paint for one day, I don't feel well physically or mentally.

  Raphael Soyer

  One Day, Routine, Wells

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• Before this I tended to paint figures and put them in an environment. Now I paint an environment to put figures in. It's a subtle difference, but it is a difference. It's something I did naturally.

  John Newman

  Change, Differences, Environment

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• No one can ever take my job away from me. I can always draw as long as I have a piece of paper and a pencil or paints.

  John Newman

  Jobs, Drawing, Long

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• Once I started working, it became better and better. I really felt that I was back into the work. I was glad I was alive. Just being able to draw and paint - even if I can't walk - is worth living for.

  John Newman

  Gratitude, Alive, Able

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• The portrait painter... If he insults his sitters his occupation is gone. Whether he paints the should instead of the features, or the latter with all its natural blemishes, he is as presumptuous as if he shouted, 'What a face. Hide it.' which would never do, although it is analogous to what landscape painters are doing every day.

  Walter J. Phillips

  Portraits, Gone, Portraiture

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• Is the artist impelled by spiritual forces, by the divine afflatus, by conscious or unconscious emulation of others? Do angles whisper in the ears of the chosen few, and create for them visions of aethereal beauty? Do landscape painters of genius walk the plains of Heaven? Or is it only vanity that urges him to paint?

  Walter J. Phillips

  Spiritual, Artist, Vanity

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• When technique is obtrusive it becomes mere mannerism, a conscious striving for effect. It is only a means to an end - the manner of putting paint to paper. It hardly embraces the expressive side of painting.

  Walter J. Phillips

  Mean, Technique, Paper

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• Art doesn't begin with a brush and a palette, but with the artist's ability to perceive life. You have to learn how to live before you can learn how to paint.

  Dean Mitchell

  Art, Perception, Brushes

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