Edward Hopper - Paint Quotes

7 Sourced Quotes

View all Edward Hopper Quotes
All I ever wanted to do is to paint sunlight on the side of a wall.

Edward Hopper
I believe that the great painters with their intellect as master have attempted to force this unwilling medium of paint and canvas into a record of their emotions. I find any digression from this large aim leads me to boredom.

Edward Hopper
Well, I have a very simple method of painting. It's to paint directly on the canvas without any funny business, as it were, and I use almost pure turpentine to start with, adding oil as I go along until the medium becomes pure oil. I use as little oil as I can possibly help, and that's my method. It's very simple... Yes, linseed oil. I used to use poppy oil, but I have heard that poppy oil is given to cracking pigment too, so I use it no longer... I find linseed oil and white lead the most satisfactory mediums.

Edward Hopper
Just to paint a representation or design is not hard, but to express a thought in painting is. Thought is fluid. What you put on canvas is concrete, and it tends to direct the thought. The more you punt on canvas the more you lose control of the thought. I've never been able to paint what I set out to paint.

Edward Hopper
It is hard for me to know what to paint. It comes slowly.

Edward Hopper
Maybe I'm not very human. What I wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of the house.

Edward Hopper
I wish I could paint more.. I do dozens of sketches for oils.. if I do one that interests me I go on to make a painting but that happens only two or three times a year.

Edward Hopper