Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Nature is a mere pretext for a decorative composition, plus sentiment. It suggests emotion, and I translate that emotion into art.
I'm an odd portrait painter in that I'm not just interested in human faces. I consider almost all of my paintings to be portraits.
My art flatters nobody by imitation; it courts nobody by smoothness, tickles nobody by petiteness... there is no finish in nature.
I studied shades, textures by painting after the Old Masters, the classical European paintings, as part of my educational process.
The beauty of art is that it allows you to slow down, and for a moment, things that once seemed unfamiliar become precious to you.
Desire is everything, not talent. It's the degree of one's desire that will dictate the extent of one's success, in any endeavour.
I must have the personal dialogue, the private time, with each painting in progress. I can't share it with anyone until it's done.
A painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light.
Great love is born of great knowledge of the thing that is loved, and if you do not know it, you can love it little or not at all.
Though I may not . . . be able to quote other authors, I shall rely on that which is much greater and more worthy - on experience.
No one should ever imitate the style of another because, with regard to art, he will be called a nephew and not a child of nature.
I've decided that art is a habit-forming drug. That's all it is, for the artist, for the collector, for anybody connected with it.
Painting is a blind man's profession. He paints not what he sees, but what he feels, what he tells himself about what he has seen.
I don't own any of my own paintings because a Picasso original costs several thousand dollars and that's a luxury I cannot afford.
To approach the spiritual in art, one will make as little use as possible of reality, because reality is opposed to the spiritual.
The problems of inventing a new language are staggering. But what else can one do if one needs to express one's feeling precisely?
The first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot.
I think that the sweetest freedom for a man on earth consists in being able to live, if he likes, without having the need to work.
I've never been interested in philosophy, but some of Jung's ideas seem useful in helping people understand pictures and so forth.
I can say that paintings are prayers, they have to do with anything that makes you wish for more that what everyday life provides.
That song helped make me a world citizen. It allowed me to live, work and sing in any city on the globe. It changed my whole life.
There is the same difference in a person before and after he is in love, as there is in an unlighted lamp and one that is burning.
Christ is more of an artist than the artists; he works in the living spirit and the living flesh, he makes men instead of statues.
It is no more easy to make a good picture than it is to find a diamond or a pearl. It means trouble and you risk your life for it.
There may be a great fire in our hearts, yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke.
Stale artifacts of the past' are always 'active components of the present moment' when they are experienced in the present moment.
I am an artist, and, through my eye, must confess to a tremendous bias. In my purely literary voyages my eye is always my compass.
A creative train of thought is set off by: the unexpected, the unknown, the accidental, the disorderly, the absurd, the impossible.
The less apparent the means and manner of the artist, the more directly will his work appeal to the understanding and the feelings.
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.
Women don't paint very well. It's a fact. There are, of course, exceptions. Agnes Martin or, from the past, Paula Modersohn-Becker.
The climax of absurdity to which art may be carried when led away from nature by fashion, may be best seen in the works of Boucher.
I think that's kind of indicative of a type of self-confidence that people develop when they recognize their own ability to create.
In the end I'm in love with it [Western European easel painting]. And that's where a lot of the influence from the work comes from.
In a sense, we are all victims of the misogyny and racism that exist in the world, no matter what our gender or race happens to be.
The enemy of photography is the convention, the fixed rules of 'how to do'. The salvation of photography comes from the experiment.
Fire is to represent truth because it destroys all sophistry and lies; and the mask is for lying and falsehood which conceal truth.
Any color is more distinctly seen when opposed to its contrary: thus, black on white, blear near yellow, green near red, and so on.
The only way I could work properly was by using the absolute maximum of observation and concentration that I could possible muster.
I use the gallery as if it were a doctor. I come for ideas and help - to look at situations within painting, rather than paintings.
The artist performs only one part of the creative process. The onlooker completes it, and it is the onlooker who has the last word.
My position is the lack of a position, but, of course, you can't even talk about it; the minute you talk, you spoil the whole game.
As long as you can change paint, you don't change. For you to change - for paint to do something to you - paint must stay constant.
Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility.
By using patches of color and tone it is possible to capture every natural impression in the simplest way, freshly and immediately.
To express a marriage of two complementary colors, their mingling and their opposition, the mysterious vibrations of kindred tones.
People are so overwhelmed with the prestige of their instruments that they consider their personal judgement of hardly any account.
Gertrude Stein's prose-song is a cold, black suet-pudding.... Cut it at any point, it is the same thing ... all fat, without nerve.
People look at me like I'm a little strange, when I go around talking to squirrels and rabbits and stuff. That's ok. That's just ok.
I tell people, 'You can do this.' And they write back and say, 'You were right. I can do this. And now I believe I can do anything.'