Painting Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Pablo Picasso

Kate Chopin

Grandma Moses

Caspar David Friedrich

Paul Klee

Boris Pasternak

Antoni Tàpies

Sculpture is the best comment that a painter can make on painting.

Light in nature creates movement in color. The movement is provided by the relationships of uneven measures, of colors contrasts among themselves and constitutes Reality [In his quote Delaunay is referring to his series 'Window'-paintings', which he had started in 1912].

Robert Delaunay

If I hadn't started painting, I would have raised chickens.

The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed [in a painting], will set off a revolution.

If London is a watercolor, New York is an oil painting.

Frankly, these days, without a theory to go with it, I can't see a painting.

Really, I do not know whether my paintings are surrealist or not, but I do know that they are the frankest expression of myself.

I don't care for 'Abstract expressionism'.... and it is certainly not 'non-objective', and not 'non-representational' either. I'm very representational some of the time, and a little all of the time. But when you're painting out of your consciousness, figures are bound to emerge. We're all of us influenced by Freud, I guess. I've been a Jungian for a long time... Painting is a state of being... Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is.

Jackson Pollock

I always work out of uncertainty but when a painting's finished it becomes a fixed idea, apparently a final statement. In time though, uncertainty returns.. your thought process goes on.

He greatly valued his possessions, chiefly because they were his, and derived genuine pleasure from contemplating a painting, a statuette, a rare lace curtain — no matter what — after he had bought it and placed it among his household gods.

I strive to express the spiritual nature of the Universe. Painting for me is a dynamic balance and wholeness of life; it is mysterious and transcending, yet solid and real.

Richard Pousette-Dart

A good painting to me has always been like a friend. It keeps me company, comforts and inspires.

If you're a painter, you are not alone. There's no way to be alone. You think and you care and you're with all the people who care. You think you care and you're with all the people who care, including the young people who don't know they do yet. Tomlin in his late paintings knew this, Jackson always knew it: that if you meant it enough..

When I am in my painting, I am not aware of what I'm doing. It is only after a short of 'get acquainted' period that I see what I have been about. I have no fears about making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through. It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess. Otherwise there is pure harmony, an easy give and take, and the painting comes out well.

Jackson Pollock

In my experience a painting is not made with colors and paint at all. I don't know what a painting is; who knows what sets off even the desire to paint?

As far as modern writing is concerned, it is rarely rewarding to translate it, although it might be easy... Translation is very much like copying paintings.

Boris Pasternak

The growth of art seems to be in cycles, and often its vigorous lifetime is restricted to a century or two. The periods of distinctive drama, Greek, English, Spanish, fall within such a limit; the schools of painting and sculpture likewise; and, in poetry, the Victorian age or the school of Pope will serve as examples.

George Edward Woodberry

The painter should paint not only what he has in front of him, but also what he sees inside himself. If he sees nothing within, then he should stop painting what is in front of him.

Caspar David Friedrich

If you scratch a great photograph, you will find two things: a painting and a photograph.

Painting and sculpture are very archaic forms. It's the only thing left in our industrial society where an individual alone can make something with not just his own hands, but brains, imagination, heart maybe.

The painting is not on a surface, but on a plane which is imagined. It moves in a mind. It is not there physically at all. It is an illusion, a piece of magic, so that what you see is not what you see.

Matisse: I do not literally paint that table, but the emotion it produces upon me.
Interviewer: But if one hasn't always emotion. What then?
Matisse: Do not paint. When I came in here to work this morning I had no emotion, so I took a horseback ride. When I returned I felt like painting, and had all the emotion I wanted.

The painting develops before my eyes, unfolding its surprises as it progresses. It is this which gives me the sense of complete liberty, and for this reason I am incapable of forming a plan or making a sketch beforehand.

Painting directly from nature is difficult as things do not remain the same; the camera helps to retain the picture in your mind.

Theodore Robinson

Engineering, medicine, business, architecture and painting are concerned not with the necessary but with the contingent - not with how things are but with how they might be - in short, with design.

Herbert A. Simon