Quotes About Inspiration

I used to change things in my early paintings to get the nuance or feeling I wanted, but now I plan everything in my head before I do it.

Being a creative person, I'm naturally drawn towards art of any kind. But I'm more attracted to paintings because they radiate an aura of their own.

I feel blessed every day when I'm working on these paintings... the first artist to ever go to another world and try to tell stories that people care about.

My paintings and comedy have a lot in common. They are both improvisations based on observation.

I'm sure I've been influenced by every fine writer I've ever read, from Dickens and Austen to Auden and Jane Hirshfield. And also, the short stories of Updike, Cheever, Munro, Alice Adams, and Doris Lessing. And the plays of Oscar Wilde. And paintings by Alice Neel and Matisse.

I saw Frank Frazetta's art, and it seared on my memory. I love his paintings. They're so amazing.

Most early Icelandic paintings are landscapes.

My early paintings weren't that good - I was very influenced by Francis Bacon. But there was a kind of intensity there. And however influenced they may have been by other people, even my earliest paintings were recognisably my own.

Many, many of my paintings have come from the first chapter of Moby Dick.

One of my favorite paintings I've done happened after I broke up with a boyfriend.

That by listening to some music, by reading some books, by looking at paintings, and most important by hanging out with one another - by collaborating with one another and creating your own network - you can achieve something that is much better than what is out there.

I'm working on a very long series of paintings based on desert folklore.

The artistic process in digital art is very much the same as for making other kinds of paintings.

I don't dare to think my paintings are great. I can't understand the arrogance of someone saying, 'I have created a big, important work.'

I've dreamed landscapes for years, and my dreams play an enormous role in my work. In fact, when I first started doing landscapes I felt insecure about painting in this style, and the dreams were like positive omens for me, and I've done a few paintings that were exact replicas of images that came to me in dreams.

I've had encounters with animals that have been really mystical. I've always been really into animals. But the way they appear in the paintings, they come from my mind's eye more than: 'I'm gonna draw a dog now.' It isn't thought out: 'Now I'm gonna draw a bird.' They just appear.

All my paintings are usually done in drawing form, very small. I make notations in drawings first, and then I make a collage for color. But drawing is always my notation.

There's something in music that fascinates me - how it communicates emotion so immediately. That's something I wanted in my paintings.

That's the great thing about art. Anybody can do it if you just believe. With practice, you can make great paintings.

Gray goes with gold. Gray goes with all colors. I've done gray-and-red paintings, and gray and orange go so well together. It takes a long time to make gray because gray has a little bit of color in it.

I love art, in particular, paintings. I have, well, a lot.

The great thing about a painter is that he or she lives on - I mean, Andrew Wyeth is more in his paintings than he was walking around.

I'm inspired by being in a different town every day - all the people I meet, all the things I see. There's no way of compartmentalizing everything in my head; whatever I'm taking in is coming out in some way. I think I love painting so much because, for me, it's so fast. There's not too much thought in these paintings.

I had a major bug for cities and for paintings and literature and all the things I thought went on in cities.