Painting Quotes

Chemistry has the same quickening and suggestive influence upon the algebraist as a visit to the Royal Academy, or the old masters may be supposed to have on a Browning or a Tennyson. Indeed it seems to me that an exact homology exists between painting and poetry on the one hand and modem chemistry and modem algebra on the other. In poetry and algebra we have the pure idea elaborated and expressed through the vehicle of language, in painting and chemistry the idea enveloped in matter, depending in part on manual processes and the resources of art for its due manifestation.

~ James Joseph Sylvester

The artist has the master picture in his mind, before he begins to paint.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

They make me...they make me think of being stuck somewhere? I don't know, like weighted down, but then these patches...

~ Kathleen Glasgow

We both disliked rude rickshwalas, shepu bhaji in any form, group photographs at weddings, lizards, tea that has gone cold, the habit of taking newspaper to the toilet, kissing a boy who'd just smoked a cigarette et cetra. Another list. The things we loved: strong coffee, Matisse, Rumi, summer rain, bathing together, Tom Hanks, rice pancakes, Cafe Sunrise, black-and-white photographs, the first quiet moments after you wake up in the morning.

~ Sachin Kundalkar

We were created to look at one another, weren't we

~ Edgar Degas

Never look back. The past is done. The future is a blank canvas. Work on creating a masterpiece. Only you have the power to make your painting beautiful.

~ Suzy Kassem

The most mesmerizing of artists is always like one who was merely drawing in the sand and people came to watch.

~ Criss Jami

What a face this girl possessed!—could I not gaze at it every day I would need to recreate it through painting, sculpture, or fatherhood until a second such face is born. Her face, at once innocent and feral, soft and wild! Her mouth voluptuous. Eyes deep as oceans, her eyes as wide as planets. I likened her to the slender Psyché and judged that the perfection of her face ennobled everything unclean around her: the dusty hems of her bunched-up skirt, the worn straps of her nightshirt; the blackened soles of her tiny bare feet, the coal-stained balcony bricks upon which she sat, and that dusty wrought-ironwork that framed her perch. All this and the pungent air!—almost foul, with so many odors. Ô, that and the spicy night! …Pungency, spice, filth and night, dust and light; all things dark did blossom in sight; flower and bloom, the night has its pearl too—the moon! And once a month it will make the face of this tender girl bloom.

~ Roman Payne

Entertain only those thoughts which bring health, vitality and happiness in your life. Start now and think right for you are the painter of the canvas of your life.

~ Sanchita Pandey

It was a tribute to Raphael that lesser artists wanted to copy his work, but this… this was a travesty. The fresco consisted of Galatea’s apotheosis, wherein she is surrounded by mythical creatures. A beautiful scene, with all the potential in the world, but very poorly executed here. Galatea herself looked vapid and empty. The rest of the painting indicated pure ignorance on the part of the painter. I shook my head in confusion. The giant Polyphemus was depicted with two normal eyes, when clearly he ought to have but one. Triton, for his horn, was using not a shell but an actual trumpet of brass. I nearly laughed aloud at that observation; would not such an instrument be completely destroyed by seawater? Who the devil had painted this monstrosity?

~ Kelsey Brickl

The world is held together by lies. When I paint, I'm searching for the truth between them, but I'm no better at this than anyone else. Worse, probably.

~ Gareth P. Jones

What keeps my heart awake is colorful silence.

~ Claude Monet

The more of us that feel the universe, the better off we will be in this world.

~ Neil Degrasse Tyson

Life is like a painting you reflect the image based on your feeling, emotion, character, attitude and how you made it.

~ Daniel Habil

When you paint your lips, eye lids, nails or whatever, to look attractive, don't forget your up stairs(intellect) if you leave it behind, i will consider all other colors invalid.

~ Michael Bassey Johnson

Alma is in a painting phase, and the people she paints are all the color of mold, look like they've just been dredged from the bottom of a lake. Her last painting was of you, slouching against the front door: only your frowning I-had-a-lousy-Third-World-childhood-and-all-I-got-was-this-attitude eyes recognizable.

~ Junot Díaz

In painting, three things must be considered - the position of the viewer, the position of the object viewed, and the position of the light that illuminates the object.

~ Lynn Cullen

When you painted on earth – at least in your earlier days – it was because you caught glimpses of heaven in the earthly landscape. The success of your painting was that it enabled others to see the glimpses too.

~ C.s. Lewis

To paint one must forget everything else. Where you live, who you know, what you eat, when to sleep. The landscape of the canvas becomes your only reality. The planet you inhabit is a single plane of infinite dimensions, stretched like a guitar string, and standing before you like a concubine waiting for your command.

~ Thomas Lloyd Qualls

The painter folded back the heavy curtain, standing in the stream of light breaking through the damp thickness of the room. He paused, still holding the drape in his hand as he considered with suspicion that a world could exist outside the window.

~ Thomas Lloyd Qualls

Writing is like painting. You sketch it, add colour, add depth and detail. You give it a final layer and then hang it proudly.

~ Kia Carrington-Russell

He smiled and squinted at me again, tilting his head up and to the right as he stared. “Maybe what I’m attracted to in you is more than your looks and your brain and your humor.” He leaned closer like he had a secret. “It could be your soul,” he whispered.I pushed his cheek until he was squinting at the door to the kitchen instead. “Is this when you tell me I’m your soul mate, O’Neill?

~ Laura Anderson Kurk

Eloquence is painted thought, and thus those who, after having painted it, add somewhat more, make a picture, not a portrait.

~ Blaise Pascal

To live is to paint, it is to create; but while we are painting, we are being painted, being created as well!

~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Every plain wall deserves a piece of work, so why not cover it with a smile?

~ Shawn Lukas

This is how he came out: he floated into the air high above the sleeping forest, his green hat spinning a few feet above his head. In his hand was the open suitcase and out of it spilled a whole sky of stars.

~ Jandy Nelson

As an artist I have always tried to be faithful to my vision of life, and I have frequently been in conflict with those who wanted me to paint not what I saw but what they wished me to see.

~ Diego Rivera

As the saturating colors of sun-life fade from sight, the ominous moon reaches out its long arm and applies the dark dyes of night.

~ Daniel J. Rice

You see, for me a painting is a dramatic action in the course of which the reality finds itself split apart. For me, that dramatic action takes precedence over all other considerations. The pure plastic act is only secondary as far as I'm concerned. What counts is the drama of that plastic art, the moment at which the universe comes out of itself and meets its own destruction.

~ Françoise Gilot

Regarding the creative: never assume you're the master, only the student. Your audience will determine if you're masterful.

~ Don Roff

It was as if I was in a picture, a flat canvas, and everything around me was flat, me painted on like everything else: no colour, nothing in front and nothing behind me, not even earlier today or tomorrow, nothing to look back or forward to, just this moment.

~ Tim Relf

It was strange walking through the empty apartment. My battered purple room was gone, Brittany’s bruised blue was gone. Two coats covered everything. It was like none of it had ever happened.

~ Kimberly Novosel

Our best canvas is all around us, in everything we touch and do.

~ Fennel Hudson

She had picked the spot the day before and carried out a stool low enough to sit on and still have her paintbox and her water cup within reach. Anna didn't use an easel. Easels seemed to her an altogether too assertive aid, too obvious. She liked to work as unobtrusively as possible, the paper spread on a board in her lap, close to her hand.

~ Tove Jansson

I had spent many years living with a plain piece of canvas just right on my face as a headboard for my bed. As the years passed by, I watched it slowly transforming into a work of art which still lives above my head. And that my friend, is truly living art.

~ Shawn Lukas

My hands are flowing like sunlight. The shapes and colors are astounding. I don't understand these images that are empowering me. My brush touches the canvas like photons to the earth, and a new world develops, free from my control, yet intrinsically dependent upon me. I am sweating with elation. I have no idea what I am doing, or what it is my hands are trying to see. There is so much strength in this clarity I am overpowered by the independence of it.

~ Daniel J. Rice

The fact that for a long time Cubism has not been understood and that even today there are people who cannot see anything in it means nothing. I do not read English, an English book is a blank book to me. This does not mean that the English language does not exist. Why should I blame anyone but myself if I cannot understand what I know nothing about? -Pablo Picasso.

~ Pablo Picasso

Whether I'm painting or not, I have this overweening interest in humanity. Even if I'm not working, I'm still analyzing people.

~ Alice Neel

The more I drive myself into the depth of my inside, the more things come up to my vision, visibly or invisibly... I even do not know if I am seeing them with my eye or with my mind. I just need to copy them on my canvases. But this mental process is always overwhelming. I often have hard time to deal with my emotion on this state. You could call this depression on surface? But actually, so many 're-birth' and 'reform' are going on on my thoughts, inspiration, philosophy...etc in the underwater. I believe this struggle make my art real. My art always comes from my emotion.

~ Hiroko Sakai

In every motions to put colors on my canvas, I feel like I am screaming, I AM HERE... To whom?.. To where?... Where am I going to...?

~ Hiroko Sakai