Quotes About Painting

A sad fact of life lately at the Museum of Modern Art is that when it comes to group shows of contemporary painting from the collection, the bar has been set pretty low.

Elizabeth Peyton, the artist known for tiny, dazzling portraits of radiant youth, is now painting tiny, dazzling portraits of radiant middle age.

These were the descendants of the colonials returning now at Britain's hour of need, the moment captured in an immediately famous painting by Bernard Gribble, The Return of the Mayflower.

He was willing to pay her to hang around his house and paint Piper's fingernails? It sounded as easy as Britney Spears.

Think about after the war and when you will paint again. There are so many good ones to paint and if you paint as well as you really can and keep out of all other things and do that, it is the true thing. You can paint the sea better than anyone now if you will do it and not get mixed up in other things. Hang on good now to how you truly want to do it. You must hold hard to life to do it.

Paul Nash's 1941 painting The Battle of Britain

My instinct about painting says, "If you don't think about it, it's right."

I'd asked around 10 or 15 people for suggestions. Finally one lady friend asked the right question, 'Well, what do you love most?' That's how I started painting money.

The painting was fantastic, even though this one didn't have mustangs in it. It was simply a landscape of a snowy field and trees and distant mountains,

A conviction, unformulated but strong, rose to the working level of her mind - that painting did something more important for Nicholas than the mere gratifying of a whim; that this form of work and liberty of expression straightened out in him something that was tangled, set free in him something that, shut up, turned bad and poisoned him from below.

Ah, lives of men! When prosperous they glitter - Like a fair picture; when misfortune comes - A wet sponge at one blow has blurred the painting.

I'm a big believer in the emotion of design, and the message that's sent before somebody begins to read, before they get the rest of the information; what is the emotional response they get to the product, to the story, to the painting - whatever it is.

I'd never painted anything before. I was quite content to take other people's work since I didn't care anyway about the subject matter. I approached subject matter as a scoundrel. I had nothing to say about it whatsoever. I only wanted to make these exciting paintings.

Music is a lot more like solving an intricate puzzle with moments of pure, random creative bliss... whereas painting is much more purely random creative bliss with moments of problem solving.

Will you tell me, 'Oh, painting is a special art, whereas anyone can write prose passably well'? Can he, indeed? ... Can you, sir? Nay, believe me, you are either an archangel or a very bourgeois gentleman indeed if you admit to having spoken English prose all your life without knowing it.

I think I'm just generally more interested in figuration than abstraction. I think that painting abstraction often feels like painting colors to me, whereas portraits always feel like something connected. I like the exchange, the collaborative aspect of sitter and subject for sure.

I had a quite unconventional childhood, in the sense that I traveled a lot and I went to 10 or 11 schools. I was completely confused academically, but wherever I went, I could paint. I painted an inordinate amount.

Art, a book, a painting, a song, can definitely inspire change, whether it's a small change or a big change but you know there's novels I've read or a scene in a film that I've seen where I definitely inspired something and made a change or addressed an issue in my life or done something cliche like make a phone call.

I do paint, and I wanted to actually be a painter. Sometimes I'll whip out paints. It's tough to find the motivation, but it's also a solitary, lonely occupation. What I like about acting is that it is such a collaborative thing.

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

In my previous life, I was an artist. I still paint. I love art.

I won a competition in primary school for my painting of Nottingham's Goose Fair; it was a riot of colour with glitter and sequins.

I paint because I love to paint. If someone buys the prints or whatever, so be it, but it's not my main form of business. As a performer, that is my main form of business.

I had a wife and children. I was mostly working in painting and decorating and then taking the occasional acting job as they came along. At that stage in your life you have to think about your priorities. It looked like I was going to have to take the building more seriously and give up acting.