„I am not an artist just someone who paints.“

„Artists who don't paint aren't artists.“

—  Billy Childish British musician 1959

Milner, Frank (ed): The Stuckists Punk Victorian [National Museums Liverpool, 2005], p. 134
From The Stuckist Manifesto, (1999) co-written with Charles Thomson

„I think the main thing is that I very rarely recognise the actual interview in print. To me, it's like being painted by an artist. And then you see the picture, and they've painted someone else.“

—  Morrissey English singer 1959

From Oor magazine (February 1987)
In interviews etc., About interviews

„The artist is obliged to invent the self who will paint his pictures.“

—  Harold Rosenberg American writer and art critic 1906 - 1978

Źródło: Art & Other Serious Matters, (1985), p. 191, "Saul Steinberg"

„There are millions of artists around the world, but only one who paints with this particular appendage.“

—  Pricasso Australian painter 1949

[Whitsunday Times staff, Comedy night a week away, Whitsunday Times, Airlie Beach, Australia, 3 May 2012, APN Newspapers Pty Ltd.]
About

„I am not a 'book of the month' artist, and I do not paint pretty pictures; but when I am no longer here my name will register forever in the history of American art.“

—  Marsden Hartley American artist 1877 - 1943

In a letter to his sister at the end of his life; as quoted in 'The return of the Native' by Joseph Phelan, Artcyclopedia online
1931 - 1943

„There's always been a trend toward simpler painting and it was bound to happen one way or another. Whenever painting gets complicated, like Abstract Expressionism, or surrealism, there's going to be someone who's not painting complicated paintings, someone who's trying to simplify…“

—  Frank Stella American artist 1936

Źródło: Quotes, 1960 - 1970, The Pratt lecture (1960), p. 117

„I am only interested in painting the actual person; in doing a painting of them, not in using them to some ulterior end of art. For me, to use someone doing something not native to them would be wrong.“

—  Lucian Freud British painter and engraver 1922 - 2011

Lucian Freud: Paintings (1987), p. 20

„What is a portrait good for, unless it shows just how the subject was seen by the painter? In the old days before photography came in a sitter had a perfect right to say to the artist: "Paint me just as I am." Now if he wishes absolute fidelity he can go to the photographer and get it.“

—  Aubrey Beardsley English illustrator and author 1872 - 1898

As quoted in Aubrey Beardsley : A Biography (1999) by Matthew Sturgis, p. 189

„Contact with other artists has always been of great importance to me. When the artists I know best used to meet.... the talk was mostly of ideas in painting. There was an unconscious collaboration between artists. Whether you agreed or disagreed was of no consequence. It was exciting and you were compelled to paint over your head…. If your painting was criticized adversely, you either imitated someone to give it importance, or you simply suffered and painted harder to make your feelings on canvas convincing... What does happen when artists meet is that we are able to see more clearly the unfolding of character as time goes on.“

—  William Baziotes American painter 1912 - 1963

Quote from Baziotes' text for the symposium 'The Creative process', Art Digest Vol. 28, no 8, 15; January 1954, p. 33
Baziotes is referring here to the many art-debates and exchanges between the New York Abstract Expressionist artists
1950s

„I accept the fact that the important painting of the last hundred years was done in France. American painters have generally missed the point of modern painting from beginning to end... Thus the fact that good European moderns [European artists who lived in the U. S. because of the Nazi-regime] are now here is very important, for they bring with them an understanding of the problems of modern painting. I am particularly impressed with their concept of the source of art being the unconscious. These idea interests me more than these specific artists do, for the two artists I admire most, Picasso and Joan Miró, are still abroad.“

—  Jackson Pollock American artist 1912 - 1956

As quoted in Abstract Expressionism: Creators and Critics, ed. Clifford Ross, Abrahams Publishers, New York, 1990, p. 138
1940's, Art and Architecture (1944)

„I think of myself as an American artist: I like it here... I feel I represent the U. S. in my art but I'm not a social critic. I just paint those things in my paintings because those things are the things I know best. I'm not trying to criticize the U. S. in any way, not trying to show up any ugliness at all. I'm just a pure artist, I guess. But I can't say if I take myself seriously as an artist. I just hadn't thought about it. I don't know how they consider me in print, though.“

—  Andy Warhol American artist 1928 - 1987

Quote of Warhol in Andy, My true Story 3, Gretchen Berg, Los Angeles Free Press (17 March 1967); as quoted in Andy Warhol, retrospective, Art and Bullfinch Press / Little Brown, 1989, pp. 457 – 467
1963 - 1967

„[An artist must apply] his personal faculties to the ideas and the events of the times in which he lives... [A]rt in painting should consist only of the representation of things which that are visible and tangible to the artist. Every age should be represented only by its own artists, that is to say, by the artist who have lived in it. I also maintain that painting is an essentially concrete art form and can exist only of the representation of both real and existing things... An abstract object, not visible, nonexistent, is not within the domain of painting.“

—  Gustave Courbet French painter 1819 - 1877

Quote in an open letter ('Credo'), (Paris, end of December 1861), published in the 'Courier du Dimanche', (addressed to prospective students); as quoted in Letters of Gustave Courbet, transl. & ed. Petra ten-Doesschate Chu, University of Chicago Press 1992, pp. 203-204
1860s

„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 Armenian-American painter 1904 - 1948

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

„Artist should be left alone to paint or not to paint, write or not to write.“

—  A.R. Ammons American poet 1926 - 2001

Paris Review interview (1996)

„Your spirit is an artist… It paints with thoughts.“

—  Teal Swan American spiritual teacher 1984

„An epoch can only be reproduced by its own artists, I mean by the artists who lived in it. I hold the artists of one century basically incapable of reproducing the aspect of a past or future century-in other words, of painting the past or the future.“

—  Gustave Courbet French painter 1819 - 1877

1860s, Realist Manifesto' - an open letter, 1861

„..Painting never means just never picturing the material things, but it is a psychological function, an expression of how his mind [of the artist] responds to things. So that is quite a difference with: painting is showing the beauty of things.“

—  Jan Mankes Dutch painter 1889 - 1920

translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek

(original Dutch: citaat van Jan Mankes, in het Nederlands:) Schilderen is.. ..nooit een afbeelding geven der stoffelijke zaken, maar een psychische functie, een uiten hoe zijn geest [van de kunstenaar] reageert ten opzichte der dingen. Dat is dus een heel verschil met: schilderen is de schoonheid der dingen laten zien.

Quote of Jan Mankes in a letter to his maceneas A.A.M. Pauwels in The Hague; as cited by J.R. de Groot in 'De bekoring van het gewone - Het werk van Jan Mankes https://www.dbnl.org/tekst/_ons003199001_01/_ons003199001_01_0014.php', p. 102
undated quotes

„A painting is finished when the artist says it is finished.“

—  Rembrandt van rijn Dutch 17th century painter and etcher 1606 - 1669

Statement attributed to Rembrandt in early biographies, as quoted in The Rise of the Cult of Rembrandt: Reinventing an Old Master in Nineteenth-Century France (2003), by Alison MacQueen
One of the popular aphorisms about Rembrandt's paintings, drawn from his early biographies in early 19th century and repeatedly attributed to the artist by the French writers and artist, Rise of the Cult of Rembrandt: Reinventing an Old Master in Nineteenth-Century France, 2003,p. 287 https://books.google.nl/books?id=N0dVqAsR5k0C&pg=PA292&lpg=PA292&dq=The+Rise+of+the+Cult+of+Rembrandt:+Reinventing+an+Old+Master+in+Nineteenth-century+France&source=bl&ots=SgL2TN2Xct&sig=ZJuOkH35vmifBkzcu5ASLdLyhTI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjx17OkrpfVAhWKnBoKHQlxA0oQ6AEIVzAJ#v=onepage&q=The%20Rise%20of%20the%20Cult%20of%20Rembrandt%3A%20Reinventing%20an%20Old%20Master%20in%20Nineteenth-century%20France&f=false/The
undated quotes

„Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.“

—  Oscar Wilde, książka Portret Doriana Graya

Źródło: The Picture of Dorian Gray