Richard Schmid Quotes

It often takes two to do a good painting - one to paint it, and another to rap the painter smartly with a hammer before he or she can ruin it.

As painters ... we must always remember that our precious poetic visions and spiritual insights will remain forever locked within us until we can boil them down to a complex arrangement of a few hundred or possibly even thousands of brushstrokes ...

If there is a conflict in your mind between what you know and what you are seeing, paint what you see because if you don't, the result will look like something that isn't there.

Paint like a pig eats.

Underlying all your choices, particularly subject matter and the way you represent it, should be your own personal scruples, the standards and rules that you voluntarily set for yourself, and which you may change or abandon whenever you choose - without explanation to anyone.

My idealism is clearly one reason I'm an artist. I see art as one of mankind's more sublime acts, as a vital counterbalance to our base impulses .

The strength and clarity of the picture you envision at the start will tell you when you are done. You are finished when you have said what you wish to say, when nothing added can make it better.

How often have we all come to that crucial point in a painting where it is practically 'begging' us to stop before we ruin it? We have all had that experience and we risk failure, or at the least mediocrity, if we ignore the voice in our art.

Your rules should arise out of your passions and your experience with what works for you.

All great art originates from the innocent child within us expressing itself through the wisdom, experience and skill of an adult.

When we are bursting with some wordless experience, Art is our voice, the song of the heart.

Scan your subject for things that are clearly impossible. After all, paint isn't magic! If you see that certain elements in the subject are beyond the limits of your pigments, try to form an idea beforehand of how you are going to handle those areas when you get to them.

In a sense, every work you do is a self-portrait because your paintings always reveal more about you than about your subject. Your experience of something, not the something itself, is the true underlying subject of every work you do.

I honestly believe students of painting in the next century will laugh at the abstract art movement. They will marvel at such a drawn-out regression in the plastic arts.

Use lots of paint and don't worry, they will make more ...

What sets you apart from the rest of humanity is your ability to give visual form to an idea - the skill to transform it into something more than merely the insight or perception alone.

The grandest and simplest things contain worlds within worlds. Seeing them is a matter of the right point of view, and your painter's eye is the special portal to such sights.

Never knowingly leave anything wrong on your canvas.

Be prepared! All of your gear should be in a state of readiness so you can concentrate on painting. Choose your brushes as you would choose weapons before battle.

Be flexible - the order in which you introduce the elements of a painting should not be a rigid system. What worked last time may not work this time.

Don't go overboard with exotic or complex ways to paint. Stick to simple solutions, unless there is a good reason to do otherwise.

Whenever I can, I paint the powerful and obvious things in my subject first.