Quotes from Edward Hopper

My aim in painting has always been the most exact transcription possible of my most intimate impression of nature.

If the picture needs varnishing later, I allow a restorer to do that, if there's any restoring necessary.

What I wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house.

Maybe I am not very human - what I wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house.

No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination.

If I had the energy, I would have done it all over the county.

I think that zinc white has a property of scaling and cracking.

It's to paint directly on the canvas without any funny business, as it were, and I use almost pure turpentine to start with, adding oil as I go along until the medium becomes pure oil. I use as little oil as I can possibly help, and that's my method.

I use a retouching varnish which is made in France, Libert, and that's all the varnish I use.

In its most limited sense, modern, art would seem to concern itself only with the technical innovations of the period.

My aim in painting has always been the most exact transcription possible of my most intimate impression of nature.

The question of the value of nationality in art is perhaps unsolvable.

In general it can be said that a nation's art is greatest when it most reflects the character of its people.

Painting will have to deal more fully and less obliquely with life and nature's phenomena before it can again become great.

I find in working always the disturbing intrusion of elements not a part of my most interested vision, and the inevitable obliteration and replacement of this vision by the work itself as it proceeds.

If the technical innovations of the Impressionists led merely to a more accurate representation of nature, it was perhaps of not much value in enlarging their powers of expression.

I trust Winsor and Newton and I paint directly upon it.

There will be, I think, an attempt to grasp again the surprise and accidents of nature and a more intimate and sympathetic study of its moods, together with a renewed wonder and humility on the part of such as are still capable of these basic reactions.

It's to paint directly on the canvas without any funny business, as it were, and I use almost pure turpentine to start with, adding oil as I go along until the medium becomes pure oil. I use as little oil as I can possibly help, and that's my method.

If you could say it in words, there would be no reason to paint.

Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world.

No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination.

More of me comes out when I improvise.

Maybe I am not very human - all I ever wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house.