“I did not know how to paint or even what to paint, but I knew I had to begin.”

Source: CAT'S EYE.

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Margaret Atwood348

Canadian writer 1939

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“It would be a sad thing for an artist if he knew how to paint. – so sad. An artist paints because it is a challenge to him – it is like trying to twist the devil. If you overcome it, there is no sport left. I don't even like to talk about painting. It is impossible to talk about painting because I don't know what it is. If I knew what it was I would get out a patent and then no one else would be able to paint.”

Arshile Gorky (1904–1948) Armenian-American painter

1942 - 1948, A Painter in a Glass House' (1948)

“I begin [a painting] from an impulse, an intense and irrational desire that takes you over, prompting you to start moving. And from experience, with some knowledge of what moves oneself, I think it's not altogether arbitrary what one begins with.... certainly implicit partially is the feeling, not that 'I am going to paint something I know' by 'through the act of painting I'm going to find out exactly how I feel.”

Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) American artist

as cited in Abstract Expressionism, Creators and Critics, ed. Clifford Ross, Abrahams Publishers, New York 1990, p. 111
1960s, Interview with David Sylvester', (1960)

“I was encouraged to look around me and to paint what I saw. I painted my story, and it had a lot of angles to it. I was trying to explain how I saw life as a black person living in America, and I put things together that were not acceptable. A lot of people did not want these kind of paintings representing America in any sense, but I wanted to tell my story and what I saw…”

Faith Ringgold (1930) American artist

On the Civil Rights Movement puncturing the image of the American Dream in https://www.theartnewspaper.com/interview/faith-ringgold-discusses-civil-rights-and-children-s-books-ahead-of-solo-serpentine-gallery-show in The Art Newspaper (2019 Jun 5)

“About 1883 a kind of break occurred in my work. I had wrung Impressionism dry, and had come to the conclusion that I knew neither how to paint nor how to draw. In a word, I was at an impasse”

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) French painter and sculptor

Benicka (1980) commented:
The frescoes of Raphael and the Pompeian murals that he saw there definitely confirmed what Renoir had begun to feel about his own art; that it was becoming too amorphous in character and was weak in design.
undated quotes
Source: ‎'‎'Renoir‎'‎', by A. Vollard, Paris, 1920, p. 135; as quoted in: Corinne Benicka (1980) Great modern masters. p. 130;

“I've started painting much more freely, and faster. I think it's working in the theatre that did it. You know what the Glyndebourne scene-painters said about my The Magic Flute? They said they had to wear sunglasses to paint it.”

David Hockney (1937) British artist

"Portrait of the Artist as a Naughty Boy," interview with John Mortimer, In Character (1983) p. 97
1980s

“My business is to paint what I see, not what I know is there.”

J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851) British Romantic landscape painter, water-colourist, and printmaker

Turner, quoted in: Donald B. MacCulloch (1927) The Wondrous Isle of Staffa, p. 160
Alternative quote:
My job is to paint what I see, not what I know
As quoted in: George Seferis (1999) A Poet's Journal: Days of 1945-1951. p. 105
undated quotes

“You know how fussy and particular I am in painting. I am ever removing the paint and repainting the spot until I am completely exhausted.”

Arshile Gorky (1904–1948) Armenian-American painter

Source: posthumous, Movements in art since 1945, p. 15: (in Gorky Memorial Exhibition, Schwabacher pp. 12)

“I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else. After all, what is a painter? He is a collector who gets what he likes in others by painting them himself. This is how I begin and then it becomes something else.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

Quoted in: Ann Livermore (1988), Artists and Aesthetics in Spain. p. 154
Attributed from posthumous publications

“I paint people not because of what they are like… but how they happen to be.”

Lucian Freud (1922–2011) British painter and engraver

"A Queen of many colours," interview with Martin Gayford, Daily Telegraph, (2006-04-20), p. 3
Other

“Painting doesn't interest me... What I paint is beyond painting.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

“I did not know how to paint or even what to paint, but I knew I had to begin.”

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Margaret Atwood348

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