Painting Art Quotes

Painting is a kind of visual poetry as poetry is a kind of verbal painting. ~ Ahdaf Soueif

I'm not knocking conceptual art; it's another department, but it doesn't move me like painting. ~ Paul Simonon

Impressionism; it is the birth of Light in painting. ~ Robert Delaunay

There is something particularly fascinating about seeing places you know in a piece of art - be that in a film, or a photograph, or a painting. ~ Sara Sheridan

I never look at a painting and ask, "Is this painting fictional or non-fictional?" It's just a painting. ~ Scott McClanahan

Art is frightening. Art isn't pretty. Art isn't painting. Art isn't something you hang on the wall. Art is what we do when we're truly alive. An artist is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity, and boldness to challenge the status quo. And an artist takes it (all of it, the work, the process, the feedback from those we seek to connect with) personally. ~ Seth Godin

What lives in art and is eternally living, is first of all the painter and then the painting. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

Garry Shandling has always been a pioneer of ... meta entertainment. He's always been a defender of the creative right to use the frame as part of the painting. ~ Dan Harmon

The world doesn't make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do? ~ Pablo Picasso

Painting, like music, has nothing to do with the reproduction of nature, nor interpretation of intellectual meanings. Whoever is able to feel the beauty of colors and forms has understood nonobjective painting. ~ Hilla Von Rebay

Art isn't only a painting. Art is anything that's creative, passionate, and personal. And great art resonates with the viewer, not only with the creator.

What makes someone an artist? I don't think is has anything to do with a paintbrush. There are painters who follow the numbers, or paint billboards, or work in a small village in China, painting reproductions. These folks, while swell people, aren't artists. On the other hand, Charlie Chaplin was an artist, beyond a doubt. So is Jonathan Ive, who designed the iPod. You can be an artists who works with oil paints or marble, sure. But there are artists who work with numbers, business models, and customer conversations. Art is about intent and communication, not substances.

An artists is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity, and boldness to challenge the status quo. And an artists takes it personally.

That's why Bob Dylan is an artist, but an anonymous corporate hack who dreams up Pop 40 hits on the other side of the glass is merely a marketer. That's why Tony Hsieh, founder of Zappos, is an artists, while a boiler room of telemarketers is simply a scam.

Tom Peters, corporate gadfly and writer, is an artists, even though his readers are businesspeople. He's an artists because he takes a stand, he takes the work personally, and he doesn't care if someone disagrees. His art is part of him, and he feels compelled to share it with you because it's important, not because he expect ~ Seth Godin

Lou Tyrrell has created a theatre that is a safe haven for playwrights, a birthing center for new American writing. Arts Garage has created a vital, enthusiastic audience for theatre, music, painting and sculpture in Delray Beach. ~ Israel Horovitz

Science for me is very close to art. Scientific discovery is an irrational act. It's an intuition which turns out to be reality at the end of it-and I see no difference between a scientist developing a marvellous discovery and an artist making a painting. ~ Carlo Rubbia

You can't make either life or art, you have to work in the hole in between, which is undefined. That's what makes the adventure of painting. ~ Robert Rauschenberg

There was a whole language that I could never make function for myself in relationship to painting and that was attitudes like tortured, struggle, pain. ~ Robert Rauschenberg

I am more a friend of art than a producer of painting. ~ Paul Cezanne

T has always been so much my desire to paint for those who don't know the artistic side of a painting. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

I leave you my portrait so that you will have my presence all the days and nights that I am away from you. ~ Frida Kahlo

This place is alive," Sunni said in wonder. "Things are moving. Inside a painting. ~ Teresa Flavin

Art is nothing tangible. We cannot call a painting 'art' as the words 'artifact' and 'artificial' imply. The thing made is a work of art made by art, but not itself art. The art remains in the artist and is the knowledge by which things are made. ~ Ananda Coomaraswamy

My drawings and paintings were done as an act of protest; I was trying by means of my work to convince the world that it is ugly, sick and hypocritical. ~ George Grosz

Nature is not only all that is visible to the eye ... it also includes the inner pictures of the soul. ~ Edvard Munch

In the domain of painting and statuary, the present-day credo of the worldly wise, especially in France, is this: ... I believe that art is, and can only be, the exact reproduction of nature ... An avenging God has heard the prayers of this multitude; Daguerre was his messiah. ~ Charles Baudelaire

What a conception of art must those theorists have who exclude portraits from the proper province of the fine arts! It is exactly as if we denied that to be poetry in which the poet celebrates the woman he really loves. Portraiture is the basis and the touchstone of historic painting. ~ August Wilhelm Von Schlegel

I congratulate you on your success stealing the painting. ~ Mark Zero

The scope of art is practically boundless; it does not begin and end with the painting of pictures and the modeling of statues; where there is room for workmanship there is room for it. ~ Lewis Foreman Day

I don't understand it. Jack will spend any amount of money to buy votes but he balks at investing a thousand dollars in a beautiful painting. ~ Jackie Kennedy

Schelling's God is the totality of Nature struggling towards consciousness, and Man is as far as the struggle has got, with the animals not too far behind, vegetables somewhat lagging, and rocks nowhere as yet. Do we believe this? Does it matter? Think of it as a poem or a painting. Art doesn't have to be true like a theorem. It can be true in other ways. This truth says there is a meaning to it all, and Man is where the meaning begins to show. ~ Tom Stoppard

If a work of art is to explore new environments, it is not to be regarded as a blueprint but rather as a form of action-painting. ~ Marshall McLuhan

Not every painter has a gift for painting, in fact, many painters are disappointed when they meet with difficulties in art. Painting done under pressure by artists without the necessary talent can only give rise to formlessness, as painting is a profession that requires peace of mind. The painter must always seek the essence of things, always represent the essential characteristics and emotions of the person he is painting ... ~ Titian

Painting is mute poetry, and poetry is blind painting ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

Comedy is the one absolutely self-aware art form. Actually, hip-hop's another one, I suppose. Because in your songs you're talking about how good a hip-hop artist you are. It's like a painter painting a panting of himself painting a painting. ~ Bo Burnham

I am adamant that we must not cut back on funding of the teaching of the arts in the schools: music, painting, theater, dance, all of it. The great thing about the arts is that the only way you learn how to do it is by doing it. ~ David McCullough

A lot of ideas don't translate very well into art. To say, "Oh my god, the grass is green ... " You're going to end up with a big green painting. ~ John Baldessari

We speak of concrete and not abstract painting because nothing is more concrete, more real than a line, a color, a surface. ~ Theo Van Doesburg

What's so astonishing about not understanding? There are so many things in art, beginning with art itself, that one doesn't understand. A painter doesn't see everything that he has put in his painting. ~ Henri Matisse

Drawing is the honesty of the art. ~ Salvador Dali

Painting, art in general, enchants me. It is my life. What else matters? When you put all your soul into a work, all that is noble in you, you cannot fail to find a kindred soul who understands you, and you do not need a host of such spirits. Is not that all an artist should wish for? ~ Camille Pissarro

You tell the big lie by carefully selecting only the small, isolated truths, linking them in such a way that that advance the bigger lie by painting a picture inside the viewer's head. The Ascended High Master of this Dark Art is Noam Chomsky. ~ Bill Whittle

No good to paint in the head - what happens is what happens when you put the paint down - you can only hope that you are alert - ready - to see. What joy it is for paint to become a thing - a being. Believe in this miracle - it is your only hope. To will this transformation is not possible. Only a slow maturation can prepare the hand and eye to become quicker than ever. Ideas about art don't matter. They collapse anyway in front of the painting. ~ Philip Guston

I've become like one of those people I hate, the sort who go to the museum and, instead of looking at the magnificent Brueghel, take a picture of it, reducing it from art to proof. It's not "Look what Brueghel did, painted this masterpiece" but "Look what I did, went to Rotterdam and stood in front of a Brueghel painting! ~ David Sedaris

The trend in some of the contemporary movements in art, but by no means all, seems to deny this ideal and to me appears to lead to a purely decorative conception of painting. ~ Edward Hopper

Painting from nature is not copying the object; it is realizing one's sensations. ~ Paul Cezanne

What has reason to do with the art of painting? ~ William Blake

The doctors spoke of amusements and distractions; but with whom, and with what, could they possibly suppose that he might amuse or enjoy himself? Had he not outlawed himself from society? Did he know one man capable of trying to lead a life such as his own, a life entirely confined to contemplation and to dreams? Did he know one man capable of appreciating the delicacy of a phrase, the subtlety of a painting, the quintessence of an idea, one man whose soul was sufficiently finely crafted to understand Mallarmé and to love Verlaine? ~ Joris-Karl Huysmans

Gods cracked, Freyrík, they would have raped me!" He surged forward so suddenly Freyrík flinched and tripped away. "And no, I did not incite or invite their attentions. It is your people who paint me like a harlot and parade me round half-naked, your people who find it amusing to use my brethren like toys, your people who teach their children such high art of disrespect that boys think rape a pleasant way to pass an afternoon! ~ Rachel Haimowitz

I saw her reflection behind me, in the mirror. I was speechless. Somehow I knew I wasn't allowed to turn around - it was against the rules, whatever the rules of the place were - but we could see each other, our eyes could meet in the mirror, and she was just as glad to see me as I was to see her. She was herself. An embodied presence. There was psychic reality to her, there was depth and information. She was between me and whatever place she had stepped from, what landscape beyond. And it was all about the moment when our eyes touched in the glass, surprise and amusement, her beautiful blue eyes with the dark rings around the irises, pale blue eyes with a lot of light in them: hello! Fondness, intelligence, sadness, humor. There was motion and stillness, stillness and modulation, and all the charge and magic of a great painting. Ten seconds, eternity. It was all a circle back to her. You could grasp it in an instant, you could live in it forever: she existed only in the mirror, inside the space of the frame, and though she wasn't alive, not exactly, she wasn't dead either because she wasn't yet born, and yet never not born - as somehow, oddly, neither was I. And I knew that she could tell me anything I wanted to know (life, death, past, future) even though it was already there, in her smile, the answer to all questions ~ Donna Tartt

No friend have I. I must live by myself alone; but I know well that God is nearer to me than others in my art, so I will walk fearlessly with Him. ~ Ludwig Van Beethoven

If the paying public demands naturalistic art, then an artist can use his skills to produce such pictures - but these are to be clearly distinguished from the artist's own art. ~ Piet Mondrian

The compelling thing about making art - or making anything, I suppose - is the moment when the vaporous, insubstantial idea becomes a solid there, a thing, a substance in a world of substances. ~ Audrey Niffenegger

Each man of us is living his own personal work of art, and cannot evade artistic responsibility for his product. ~ Richard McKenna

To me there is no past or future in my art. If a work of art cannot live always in the present it must not be considered at all. The art of the Greeks, of the Egyptians, of the great painters who lived in other times, is not an art of the past; perhaps it is more alive today than it ever was ... ~ Pablo Picasso

Endeavor to be always patient of the faults and imperfections of others; for thou hast many faults and imperfections of thine own that require forbearance. If thou art not able to make thyself that which thou wishest, how canst thou expect to mold another in conformity to thy will? ~ Thomas A Kempis

When your art fails, make better art. ~ Seth Godin

Perspective is to painting what the bridle is to the horse, the rudder to a ship. ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

It's the kind of democratization of the Internet that has led to the breaking down of barriers into the creative arts. ~ Kevin Spacey

Music is an amazing thing. I don't know if we really think about it the same way we consider a painting an amazing thing. I mean, a painting is, in quotes, imaginary. There is nothing on the canvas when you start; and writing a song, there is nothing there when you start. ~ Lou Reed

Ironically, [living in] communities of the like - minded is one of the greatest dangers of today s globalized world. And it s happening everywhere, among liberals and conservatives, agnostics and believers, the rich and the poor, East and West alike. We tend to form clusters based on similarity, and then we produce stereotypes about other clusters of people. In my opinion, one way of transcending these cultural ghettos is through the art of storytelling ~ Elif Shafak

A vacant white room with lights is still a submission to the neutral. Works of art seen in such spaces seem to be going through a kind of esthetic convalescence. ~ Robert Smithson

Art has no cosmology, it gives us no view of the universe; every distinct work of art gives us a little cosmology of its own, and no ingenuity will combine all these into a single whole. ~ Robin G. Collingwood

Friendship is a magnificent art of life that is drawn by two hearts and two minds. ~ Debasish Mridha

A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips;
not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Half of politics is "image-making", the other half the art of making people believe the imager ~ Hannah Arendt

Art is a serious matter ~ Umberto Eco

Creation is the artist's true function; where there is no creation there is no art. ~ Henri Matisse

And as a bird each fond endearment tries To tempt its new-fledg'd offspring to the skies, He tried each art, reprov'd each dull delay, Allur'd to brighter worlds, and led the way. ~ Oliver Goldsmith

For what is the gift of the poet and the artist except to see the sights which others cannot see and to hear the sounds that others cannot hear? ~ Ouida

Every human being is a work of art. ~ Wolf Vostell

Would it not be better to have it understood that realism, in so far as the word means reality to life, is always bad art
although it may possibly be very good journalism? ~ Sherwood Anderson

You have made me ashamed of the wasted years. You have made me acknowledge that no darkness has ever been deep enough to extinguish my personal knowledge of love. And all around me in this world I see evidence of love. I see love. I see it in the human struggle. I see its undeniable penetration in all that humans have accomplished in their poetry, their painting, their music, their love of one another and refusal to accept suffering as their lot. ~ Anne Rice

The practice of any art demands more than 'mere savoir faire'. One must not only be in love with what one does, one must also know how to make love. In love self is obliterated. Only the beloved counts. ~ Henry Miller

Don't overplay your part – underplay your part. That's the way to play it effectively. ~ Art Hochberg

That's like the really fun, exciting thing about wrestling. There's no such thing as perfecting this art. You're constantly growing and you're constantly progressing and changing up you're style and gauging an audience to make sure that audience is enjoying what you're doing. ~ Adam Cole

But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed? How has it happened that all the fine arts, architecture, painting, sculpture, statuary, music, poetry, and oratory, have been prostituted, from the creation of the world, to the sordid and detestable purposes of superstition and fraud?
[Letter to judge F.A. Van der Kamp, December 27, 1816.] ~ John Adams

Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots who may resist the intrigues of the favorite are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests. ~ George Washington

But if I had to choose a single destination where I'd be held captive for the rest of my time in New York, I'd choose the Metropolitan Museum of Art. ~ Tim Gunn