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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• 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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• Fill a space in a beautiful way.

  Georgia O'Keeffe

  Beautiful, Art, Space

  Georgia O'Keeffe, Jonathan Stuhlman, Barbara Buhler Lynes (2007). “Georgia O'Keeffe: Circling Around Abstraction”, p.15, Hudson Hills

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

  Paul Cezanne

  Alive

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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 completed my life.

  Frida Kahlo

  Art, Happy Friday, Artist

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

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

  Mark Rothko

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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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• Paint records the most delicate gesture and the most tense. It tells whether the painter sat or stood or crouched in front of the canvas. Paint is a cast made of the painter's movements, a portrait of the painter's body and thoughts.

  James Elkins

  Portraits, Records, Movement

  James Elkins (2004). “What Painting Is”, p.5, Routledge

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• Drawing is speaking to the eye; talking is painting to the ear.

  Joseph Joubert

  Pain, Eye, Talking

  Joseph Joubert (1896). “Pensées of Joubert”

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• Maybe poets express more directly a sense of sympathy for other human beings. Painting is a little bit more of a retreat from human beings in real life; painting is more about the extreme moments when speech doesn't help anymore.

  Francesco Clemente

  Real, Speech, Littles

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• Painting is a very difficult thing. It absorbs the whole man, body and soul, thus have I passed blindly many things which belong to real and political life.

  Max Beckmann

  Real, Men, Political

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  Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.

  Pablo Picasso

  Inspirational, Motivational, Leadership

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

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• The best picture makes us say, I am a painter also.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Best Picture, Painter

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1972). “Early Lectures: 1838-1842”

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• I paint my own reality.

  Frida Kahlo

  Art, Reality, My Own

  Elena Poniatowska, Frida Kahlo, Carla Stellweg (1992). “Frida Kahlo: the camera seduced”, Vintage

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• More than a process, painting is being possessed.

  Philip Guston

  Process, Possessed

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• When I judge art, I take my painting and put it next to a God made object like a tree or flower. If it clashes, it is not art.

  Paul Cezanne

  Art, Flower, Judging

  "Is Cooking Ever an Art?" by John Mariani, www.esquire.com. January 17, 2012.

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