“I dream my painting, and then I paint my dream.”

—  Vincent Van Gogh

As quoted in Marry Your Muse: Making a Lasting Commitment to Your Creativity (1997) by Jan Phillips, p. 176
Undated

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Vincent Van Gogh photo
Vincent Van Gogh 238
Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890) 1853–1890

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undated
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Variant: I don't paint dreams or nightmares, I paint my own reality.

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“Reality has become so intolerable, she said, so bleak, that all I can paint now are the colors of my dreams.”

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Bram van Velde photo

“Painting is so stupid, so simple. I paint to get out of the through. I paint my misery.”

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“I had to go to the Bauhaus to the basic course that was given by Itten. And I submitted to that although I was a little older than Itten. But I have not the best memories of my studies there. So when that course was over everyone had to exhibit his work and then it was decided whether or not one could continue. I was accepted to continue. But I wanted to go into a workshop and I wanted to make stained glass. That was my old dream. Glass pictures. But Itten thought I was not ready for that. Certainly to delay my study in glass, Itten said, 'Glass painting is a branch of wall painting and you should go first to our wall painting workshop,' And I said, 'That's nonsense. Wall painting has to do with reflected light and glass painting with direct light.' So I said 'Sorry, I'll do my own stuff on my own.”

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“For me, painting means the continuation of dreaming by other means.”

Neo Rauch (1960) German painter

As quoted in "Neo Rauch: ‘For Me, Painting Means the Continuation of Dreaming by other Means’" at the Goethe-Institut (February 2007) http://www.goethe.de/kue/bku/thm/kab/en2085683.htm

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“… in my dreams the world would come alive, becoming so captivatingly majestic, free and ethereal, that afterwards it would be oppressive to breathe the dust of this painted life.”

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“But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
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He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1499/
Variant: I have spread my dreams under your feet.
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
Source: The Wind Among the Reeds (1899)
Context: Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
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