Quotes About Painting

My real background was in art studies. At the beginning I was a painter, then I was this graphic designer, then I became an illustrator, then I was a comic artist. But for me it's a different way of expression, a different field of art. They're not separated; everything for me is related.

I don't believe in making pencil sketches and then painting landscape in your studio. You must be right under the sky.

I do real paintings, you know. I'm a little messy in the studio, so I'm a bit of a danger. But I just adore it.

I wanted to study painting and become a painter, but I had a huge flip-over in my life when I was about 18 or 19. I was part of a criminal environment; I got arrested and convicted, and I had to start thinking in a new way.

The arts community is generally dominated by liberals because if you are concerned mainly with painting or sculpture, you don't have time to study how the world works. And if you have no understanding of economics, strategy, history and politics, then naturally you would be a liberal.

I'm a much better filmmaker than painter. But studying it did make me visually acute and taught me lessons like being economic: Say something once and you don't have to say it again.

I influenced the BG style by not being able to draw perspective. The BG artists developed cool graphic painting styles to make my bad backgrounds look like they were that way on purpose.

I couldn't resist painting Orpheus and Charon on the River Styx. There was something strangely intriguing about seeing Orpheus playing his lyre as he is being shuttled across the river.

For an Impressionist to paint from nature is not to paint the subject, but to realize sensations.

I never know what it's going to look like. Wouldn't be much point in painting if I already knew the outcome. I have a subject in front of me and I start flooding colour and making marks, I don't know, it's improvisation isn't it?

The artist himself is actually the subject in everything after, say, 1900. Eventually, art becomes so removed from the community that you have to know about the artist before you can even look at the painting, because there is a conceptual idea going on.

The substance of painting is light.

Unfortunately for the composers of the time, wealthy Renaissance merchants were more likely to commission a painting than a composition. The painting could be owned, repeatedly shown off, and later resold, unlike the music. The financial incentive to commission a composition, which can be enjoyed by any audience member, was weaker. Paintings were closer to private goods, and musical performances were closer to public goods.

I painted the lines and colours that affected my inner eye. I painted from memory without adding anything, without the details that I no longer saw in front of me. This is the reason for the simplicity of the painting, their obvious emptiness. I painted the impressions of my childhood, the dull colours of a forgotten day.

Philosophers and aestheticians may offer elegant and profound definitions of art and beauty, but for the painter they are all summed up in the phrase: To create a harmony.

The arts teach and moralise by their beauty alone, not by translating a philosophical or social formula. For the truly artistic person, painting has itself as it's purpose, which is quite enough.

I want to paint the air in which the bridge, the house and the boat are to be found - the beauty of the air around them, and that is nothing less than the impossible.

Painting is a duality and abstract painting is an entirely aesthetic thing. It always remains on one level. It is only really interesting in the beauty of its patterns or its shapes.

The best way to begin is to say: 'Balthus is a painter of whom nothing is known. And now let us have a look at the paintings'.

I was never a hugely successful theatre designer. I painted a lot of scenery and did the lighting, and my lighting business grew out of that.

There is a better chance of getting an exciting painting from a laboured study with texture than from a fine drawing without it.

Kauffman was the first Southern California artist ever to paint an original painting.

Had reason ever created a poem, or a symphony, or a painting? If rationality can't see things like the secret commonwealth, it's because rationality's vision is limited. The secret commonwealth is there. We can't see it with rationality any more than we can weigh something with a microscope: it's the wrong sort of instrument. We need to imagine as well as measure ...

Just listen to the music and paint. Follow the sound. Don't think about rules. Don't worry about getting it perfect. Just let the song carry you." "But what about instructions?" "There are no other instructions.