American Painter Quotes

A rain-tight roof, frugal living, a box of colors, and God's sunlight through clear windows keep the soul attuned and the body vigorous for one's daily work.

Albert Pinkham Ryder

I have many ideas for lights. I will paint only lights at night.

The reason for the survival of the award system is purely commercial.

Only a bad artist thinks he has a good idea. A good artist does not need anything.

Painting, which is essentially a rhythmic harmony of coloured spaces.

Arthur Wesley Dow

Small pictures since the Renaissance are like novels; large pictures are like dramas in which one participates in a direct way.

Whether its [David] Berkowitz, whether its [Ted] Bundy, whether its Williams, Wayne Williams down in Atlanta or any of the others, or Charlie Manson—I don't comment about other cases for the simple fact is that I wasn't there.

John Wayne Gacy

To play your colors by eye is worse than playing the piano by ear.

I taught in the Academy from the opening of the schools until I was turned out, a period much longer than I should have permitted myself to remain there. My honors are misunderstanding, persecution and neglect, enhanced because unsought.

We are getting mixed up with the French tradition. In talking about the necessity to 'finish' a thing, we then said American painters 'finish' a thing that looks 'unfinished', and the French, they 'finish' it. I have seen Henri Matisse's that were more 'unfinished' and yet more 'finished' than any American painters. Matisse was obviously in a terrific emotion at the time and he was more 'unfinished' than 'finished'.

William Baziotes

Just as I came out into the rue, an omnibus came by - pas complet, so I sprang in, without that prayer and fasting which should chasten the mind before risking it in a French omnibus.

My painting is what I have to give back to the world for what the world gives to me.

Georgia O'Keeffe

Once you know about a work of mine you own it. There's no way I can climb inside somebody's head and remove it.

Lawrence Weiner

The greatness of art is not in the display of knowledge, or in material accuracy, but in the distinctness with which it conveys the impressions of a personal vital force, that acts spontaneously, without fear or hesitation.

I would like to make something that is real in itself that does not remind anyone of any other things, and that does not have to be explained like the letter A, for instance.

I didn't want to be a woman artist, I just wanted to be an artist.

I wanted to get it all down, maybe out of my system. I wanted to be able to say, Everything's possible-if you believe and can get excited.

When Jackson talked about painting he didn't usurp anything that wasn't himself. He didn't want to change anything, he wasn't using any outworn attitude about it, he was always himself. He just wanted to be in it because he loved it. The response in the person's mind to that mysterious thing that has happened before has nothing to do with 'who did it first'. Tomlin however, did hear these voices and in reference to his early work and its relation to Braque, I like him for that. He was not an academician of Cubism even then; he was an extremely personal and sensitive artist.

Re Arkansas: Its airs—just breathe them, and they will make you snort like a horse.

Thomas B. Thorpe

I was extremely timid and to be made to feel that I was not wanted, although in a place where I had every right to be, even months afterwards caused me sometimes weeks of pain. Every time any one of these disagreeable incidents came into my mind, my heart sank, and I was anew tortured by the thought of what I had endured, almost as much as the incident itself.

Henry Ossawa Tanner

I'm an average nobody. I get to live the rest of my life like a schnook.