Quotes About Painting

There are two ways of reasoning about painting: how to do it and how not to do it; how to d it with great deal of drawing and not much colour, how not to do it with a great deal of colour and not much drawing.

When I see how several painters I know here are struggling with their watercolours and paintings so that they can't see a solution anymore, I sometimes think: Friend, the fault is in your drawing. I don't regret for a moment that I did not go in for watercolour and oil painting straight away. I am sure I will catch up if only I struggle on, so that my hand does not waver in drawing and perspective.

All the same, I'm sure that if one is brave then recovery comes from within, through complete acceptance of suffering and death, and through the surrender of one's will and love of self. But that's no good to me, I like to paint, to see people and things and everything that makes our life—artificial, if you like. Yes, real life would be something else, but I don't think I belong to that category of souls who are ready to live, and also ready to suffer, at any moment.

Housed in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the following plate was completed in 1886, portraying the unusual subject of a skeleton smoking a cigarette. The work has roused many interpretations, including a depiction of mortality and a prophetic cry of the dangers of tobacco. In the next two years, van Gogh painted two other paintings with skulls, illustrating his fascination with the macabre subject.

Now, I'm going through a similar period of struggle and despondency, of patience and impatience, of hope and desolation. But I must plod on and anyway, after a while I'll understand more about making watercolours. If it were that easy, one wouldn't take any pleasure in it. And it's exactly the same with painting.

Spero di avere un po' di fortuna con quel quadro dei mangiatori di patate.

Sua alma, seu espírito, não estão a serviço de seu pincel, mas seu pincel é que está a serviço de seu espírito. Assim também a tela é que tem medo do bom pintor e não o pintor da tela.

Acho que isto se deve ao fato de que, antes de começar a pintar, desenhei e estudei perspectiva o tempo necessário para poder compor um assunto que eu visse.

As far as I know there is not a single academy where one learns to draw and paint a digger, a sower, a woman setting the kettle over the fire, or a seamstress. But in every city of some importance there is an academy with a choice of models for historical, Arabic, Louis XV, in one word all really non-existent figures.

I am hard at it, painting with the enthusiasm of a Marseillais eating bouillabaisse, which won't surprise you when you know that what I'm at is the painting of some great sunflowers.

Só me resta a escolha entre ser um bom pintor ou um mau pintor. Escolhi a primeira alternativa. Mas as necessidades da pintura são como as de uma amante ruinosa, não se consegue fazer nada sem dinheiro, e nunca se tem o suficiente.

Cuando siento una necesidad de religión, salgo de noche y pinto las estrellas.

Did I tell you that I had sent the drawings to friend Russell? At the moment I am doing practically the same ones again for you, there will be twelve likewise. You will then see better what there is in the painted studies in the way of drawing. I have already told you that I always have to fight against the mistral, which makes it absolutely impossible to be master of your stroke. That accounts for the "haggard" look of the studies.

To my letter of the day before yesterday I want to add that yesterday I had a letter from Rappard, and that our quarrel is completely made up, that he has sent me a sketch of a large picture of a brickyard which he is painting.

If I can manage to paint the coloring of my own head, which is not to be done without some difficulty, I shall likewise be able to paint the heads of other good souls

Paul Gauguin's remark about his friend Van Gogh is not without interest: "Il oubliait même," wrote the famous painter of négresses, "d'écrire le hollandais, et comme on a pu voir par la publication de ses lettres à son frère, il n'écrivait jamais qu'en français, et cela admirablement, avec des 'Tant qu'à, Quant à,' à n'en plus finir."[1]

Completed in 1888, the following plate is housed in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. It depicts Joseph, the father of the family, who was born on 4 April 1841 in Lambesc. Van Gogh and the postman became good friends and drinking companions. Van Gogh compared Roulin to Socrates on many occasions. In appearance, Roulin reminded the painter of the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky, who had the same broad forehead, nose and shape of beard.

At present I absolutely want to paint a starry sky. It often seems to me that night is still more richly coloured than the day; having hues of the most intense violets, blues and greens. If only you pay attention to it you will see that certain stars are lemon-yellow, others pink or a green, blue and forget-me-not brilliance. And without my expatiating on this theme it is obvious that putting little white dots on the blue-black is not enough to paint a starry sky.

The little may contrast with the great, in painting, but cannot be said to be contrary to it. Oppositions of colors contrast but there are also colors contrary to each other, that is, which produce an ill effect because they shock the eye when brought very near it.

You might be a redneck if your favorite Christmas present was a painting on black velvet.

The paintings are transferred from my computer to a disk, and I can hand it to the printer this way; or I can modem the painting to the printer over the phone lines from my house in Hawaii.

The coming and going of birth and death is a painting. Unsurpassed enlightenment is a painting. The entire phenomenal universe and the empty sky are nothing but a painting.

Pour moi, peindre un tableau c'est engager une action dramatique au cours de laquelle la réalité se trouve déchirée. Ce drame l'emporte sur toute autre considération. L'acte plastique n'est que secondaire, en ce qui me concerne. Ce qui compte, c'est le drame de l'acte lui-même, le moment où l'univers s'échappe pour rencontrer sa propre destruction

When children paint, they express their ideas rather than their perception, and when Picasso had recourse to such a technique, then that was his personal response to his approaching death.