John Sloan Quotes

40 Sourced Quotes

Art is the response of the living to life. It is therefore the record left behind by civilization.

John Sloan
A piece of drapery is like a necktie, hot stuff to paint, and one of the easiest things for a painter to kid himself into thinking he can do. Don't be fooled by the color. Go after the shape and character. Hew the forms together with colored tones.

John Sloan
The idea of taking up art as a calling, a profession, is a mirage. Art enriches life. It makes life worth living. But to make a living at it—that idea is incompatible with making art.

John Sloan
The subject may be of first importance to the artist when he starts a picture, but it should be of least importance in the finished product. The subject is of no aesthetic significance.

John Sloan
Assimilate all you can from tradition and then say things in your own way.

John Sloan
[As a painting teacher] I'm not flirting, playing around. I'm serious about it... If you don't want to be serious about playing [at art], do something of no account. Go into banking. Buy collar buttons at five cents a dozen and sell them for five cents a piece.

John Sloan
I have nothing to teach you that will help you to make a living.

John Sloan
A good drawing has immense vitality because it is explanatory. In a good drawing even its faults have become virtues.

John Sloan
People who take things too literally don't get much of anything from my teaching. By never saying anything I mean, I say a great deal. I never mean anything I say under oath. I never mean exactly what I say. Not even this. You have to read between the words.

John Sloan
Originality is a quality that cannot be imitated. The technique of the language, on the other hand, is something that belongs to all who can understand it.

John Sloan
When you draw a crowd of people in a street or room or landscape, decide whether you want to say that the people dominate the place or that the place is more important than the people.

John Sloan
Always think of drawing, getting the forms realized, emphasizing the design.

John Sloan
Have a special interest, a positive prejudice about some clump of trees or one particular knoll, an excitement about them can spread through the whole composition, and so fire the rest of the things that you are only mildly interested in.

John Sloan
Form your own color concept of things in nature. I have no rules for fine color to give you.

John Sloan
Draw with the brush. Carve the form. Don't be carried away by subtleties of modeling and nice pigmentation at the expense of losing the form.

John Sloan
The emphasis on original, individual work in the past years has done a great deal to produce a crop of eccentric fakes and has carried art away from the stream of tradition. Tradition is our heritage of knowledge and experience. We can't get along without it.

John Sloan
Then there is this idea that the world owes you a living. Here is a little thought about that. It isn't particularly logical but it makes my point. You were paid when you were born, with the privilege of living. Death is all that is coming to you. Life came to you when you were born.

John Sloan
Sets of lines can say something about the direction and nature of the light. They are used by great fresco painters as a sign for shade.

John Sloan
Study the great brush drawings of the Chinese and Japanese... When we try to imitate their conventions for perspective, form and texture we lose the content, because those artists were part of an ancient tradition. Our tradition changes rapidly, our schools of thought come to fruition quickly and decay again. We see differently.

John Sloan
Art is the result of a creative impulse derived out of a consciousness of life.

John Sloan
You can be a giant among artists without ever attaining any great skill. Facility is a dangerous thing. When there is too much technical ease the brain stops criticizing. Don't let the hand fall into a smart way of putting the mind to sleep.

John Sloan
There is a better chance of getting an exciting painting from a laboured study with texture than from a fine drawing without it.

John Sloan
The important thing is to keep on drawing when you start to paint. Never graduate from drawing.

John Sloan
In the work of Seurat, you can see the dots of neutral colors carrying the form and then the dots of more intense color that make the color texture. It is a totally different principle that than of the Impressionists who used broken color to imitate visual effect.

John Sloan
The purpose of subject matter is to veil technique. The great artist uses the cloak of resemblance to hide the means.

John Sloan