Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'm not interested in painting; I'm not interested in making a picture. Then what the hell am I interested in? I must be interested in this process.
I hate everything approaching temperamental inspiration,'sacred fire'and all those attributes of genius which serve only as cloaks for untidy minds.
In our instant pudding world, everything is sweet, smooth, very convenient and fast. There are lots of assorted flavors, but they're all artificial.
By the time you establish your priorities, there really isn't any fun or need to interest yourself in what you're doing. And this I find disastrous.
Very quickly a painting is turned into a facsimile of itself when one becomes so familiar with with it that one recognizes it without looking at it.
We are all hungry and thirsty for concrete images. Abstract art will have been good for one thing: to restore its exact virginity to figurative art.
I began drawing as a very young child and had a grandfather who experimented with photography, so those things constituted my first exposure to art.
A teacher can do very little for a pupil and should only be thankful if he don't hinder him, and the greater the master, mostly the less he can say.
Every painting I do blends time frames. The great thing about being an artist is I can make the past join the present in some reality of the future.
The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.
To believe in God for me is to feel that there is a God, not a dead one, or a stuffed one, who with irresistible force urges us towards more loving.
I have a firm faith in art, a firm confidence in its being a powerful stream which carries a man to a harbor, though he himself must do his bit too.
What is sublime? / the artist said. / I haven't time / to be well read. / To be sub lime / I'll place, instead, / green citrus fruit / upon my head.
Nothing is rarer than a solitary lie; for lies breed like Surinam toads; you cannot tell one but out it comes with a hundred young ones on its back.
Instead of the vast organization to exploit the weakness of the Many, should we not possess one for the exploitation of the intelligence of the Few?
The young artist of today need no longer say 'I am a painter,' or 'a poet,' or 'a dancer.' He is simply an 'artist.' All of life will be open to him.
An artist's early work is inevitably made up of a mixture of tendencies and interests, some of which are compatible and some of which are in conflict
As for myself, I met with as much success as I ever could have wanted. In other words, I was enthusiastically run-down by every critic of the period.
I've spent so long on some paintings that I no longer know what to think of them, and I am definitely getting harder to please; nothing satisfies me.
What great comedians, great comic writers, great comic actors do is that they just read the headlines with the right eyebrow position and it's funny.
One must go through life, be it red or blue, stark naked and accompanied by the music of a subtle fisherman, prepared at all times for a celebration.
I am interposing overlaid planes a short way off... To make it understood that things are in front of each other instead of being scattered in space.
Since light is best expressed through differences in color quality, color should not be handled as a tonal gradation, to produce the effect of light.
I came from a background where access to museum culture was rarely granted, and, when you got it, people wondered what the hell you were doing there.
A bird is an instrument working according to mathematical law, which instrument it is within the capacity of man to reproduce with all its movements.
I was a barbarian, tender and full of violence. I translated by instinct, without any method, not merely an artistic truth but above all a human one.
Such compositions, line and color ideas, such wonders come into my mind and have stuck! - They will this time be dismissed only by being painted out.
I envy the poet. He is encouraged toward drunkenness and wallows with nubile wenches while the painter must endure wretchedness and pain for his art.
It's when you've found out how to do certain things, that it's time to stop doing them, because what's missing is that you're not including the risk.
My paintings always feature trails that dissolve into mysterious areas, patches of light that lead the eye around corners, pathways, open gates, etc.
I remember my mom had a big collection of copies of Saturday Evening Post magazines, and that was really my introduction to those great illustrators.
It was Richepin who said somewhere, 'The love of art means loss of real love'... True, but on the other hand, real love makes you disgusted with art.
I have the belief that a person and his art should have one direction; your work should be a synonym for your person - the two shouldn't be separate.
Although I studied, I have never been taught paintingbecause I possess in my psychological makeup a peculiarity that resents any outside interference.
An artist's early work is inevitably made up of a mixture of tendencies and interests, some of which are compatible and some of which are in conflict.
When ya gotta goNow we know what we are here for. We are not here to love fear and serve any old bearded but invisible thunder god. We are here to go.
Get yourself to a vantage point of seclusion and view the world with your eyes alone. Think of the infinite spaces of the skies and the world beneath.
Every day I discover more and more beautiful things. It’s enough to drive one mad. I have such a desire to do everything, my head is bursting with it.
I look at a lot of artists. I'm inspired by - I suppose I shouldn't say 'inspired,' but it's not really influenced. I am inspired. Art comes from art.
I think people have to be given - or take - the permission to say that something is nothing. Just because it's in a museum doesn't mean it's anything.
I believe that everything in Nature aspires to the acme of strength, well-being, and happiness; and everything that deviates from this I call immoral.
Interesting is when one can produce a picture that is pretty, but with undercurrents. The metaphor that comes to mind is in the poems of Robert Frost.
It is always my endeavour however in making a picture that it should be without a companion in the world. At least such should be a painters ambition.
In portraits, the grace and, we may add, the likeness consists more in taking the general air than in observing the exact similitude of every feature.
I think there's something important in going against the grain and perhaps finding value in things that aren't necessarily institutionally recognized.
The performance of black American identity feels very different from actually living in a black body. There's a dissonance between inside and outside.
According to one critic, my works looked like scraped billboards. I went to look at the billboards and decided that more billboards should be scraped.
Painting is not for me either decorative amusement, or the plastic invention of felt reality; it must be every time: invention, discovery, revelation.
Even if the painting is green, well then! The 'subject' is the green. There is always a subject; it's a joke to suppress the subject, it's impossible.
Things are beautiful or ugly only in time and space. The new man's vision being liberated from these two factors, all is unified in one unique beauty.