Quotes about painting

„I dare not think of the sun-drenched beaches and the stormy skies, and of the joy of painting them in the sea breezes.“

—  Eugène Boudin French painter 1824 - 1898

Quote in a letter, from Paris 14 June 1869, to family-friend Ferdinand Martin; as cited by Colin B. Bailey in The Annenberg Collection: Masterpieces of Impressionism and Post-impressionism, publisher, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2009, p. 7
Boudin felt himself detained in the big city Paris and longed fort the beach
1850s - 1870s

„Everything that is painted directly and on the spot always has strength, a power, and a vivacity of touch one cannot recover in the studio... Three strokes of the brush in front of nature are worth more than two days of work at the easel“

—  Eugène Boudin French painter 1824 - 1898

in the studio
Quote from Boudin's sketchbook; as quoted in Boudin at Trouville, by Vivien Hamilton, exh. Catalogue, London John Murray Ltd., 1992, p. 16
undated quotes

„I'm not performing miracles, I'm using up and wasting a lot of paint…“

—  Claude Monet French impressionist painter 1840 - 1926

„I have gone back to some things that can't possibly be done: water, with weeds waving at the bottom. It is a wonderful sight, but it drives one to crazy to try to paint it. But that is the kind of thing I am always a tackling.“

—  Claude Monet French impressionist painter 1840 - 1926

Quote in Monet's letter to art-critic and his friend Gustave Geffroy, 22 June 1890; as cited in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 129
1890 - 1900

„I want to paint the way a bird sings.“

—  Claude Monet French impressionist painter 1840 - 1926

Variant: I would like to paint the way a bird sings.
Source: Monet By Himself

„If the world really looks like that I will paint no more!“

—  Claude Monet French impressionist painter 1840 - 1926

„A ship is always referred to as "she" because it costs so much to keep her in paint and powder.“

—  Chester W. Nimitz United States Navy fleet admiral 1885 - 1966

Remarks to the Society of Sponsors, U.S. Navy, 13 February 1940

„I wanted to paint a picture,
in indelible print, across
the canvass of my heart.“

—  Suman Pokhrel Nepali poet, lyricist, playwright, translator and artist 1967

<span class="plainlinks"> The Tajmahal and my Love http://www.best-poems.net/love_poems/the_taj_mahal_amp_my_love.html/</span>
From Poetry

„We don't make mistakes; we just have happy accidents. And that's when you really experience the joy of painting.“

—  Bob Ross American painter, art instructor, and television host 1942 - 1995

Bob Ross: Beauty Is Everywhere. Collection 1: Ep. 8 "Wintertime Blues"; The Joy of Painting Season 20: Episode 3 Bob Ross: Winter in Pastel.

„I have never seen an angel. Show me an angel, and I'll paint one.“

—  Gustave Courbet French painter 1819 - 1877

Courbet, c 1860's, later quoted by Vincent van Gogh in a letter to brother Theo (July, 1885); in The letters of Vincent van Gogh, ed. Ronal de Leeuw - Penguin, New York, 1996, p. 302
1860s

„I make what it pleases me to make.... I have no ideas about what the paintings imply about the world. I don't think that's a painter's business. He just paints paintings without a conscious reason. I intuitively paint flags.“

—  Jasper Johns American artist 1930

Quote of Jasper Johns, as cited in Trend to the Anti-Art: Targets and Flags, Newsweek 51 no. 13, March 1958, p. 96
1950s

„A painting is not a picture of an experience; it is an experience.“

—  Mark Rothko American painter 1903 - 1970

As quoted in 'Mark Rothko', Dorothy Seiberling in LIFE magazine (16 November 1959), p. 82
1950's

„The painting never changes once I've started to paint it. I work things out before-hand in the sketches.“

—  Frank Stella American artist 1936

Quotes, 1971 - 2000
Source: Machine in the Studio, Caroline. A. Jones, University of Chicago Press, 1996, pp. 197-198

„I didn't want to mask variations; I didn't want to record a path. I wanted to get the paint out of the can and onto the canvas... I tried to keep the paint as good as it was in the can.“

—  Frank Stella American artist 1936

Source: Quotes, 1960 - 1970, p. 121

„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

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

„I always get into arguments, with people who want to retain the old values in painting — the humanistic values that they always find on the canvas. If you pin them down, they always end up asserting that there is something there besides the paint on the canvas. My painting is based on the fact that only what can be seen there is there. It really is an object. Any painting is an object..“

—  Frank Stella American artist 1936

Quotes, 1960 - 1970
Source: LIFE http://books.google.com/books?id=XUoEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA49, Vol. 64, nr. 3, 19 January 1968, p. 49

„Why do two colors, put one next to the other, sing? Can one really explain this? no. Just as one can never learn how to paint.“

—  Pablo Picasso Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer 1881 - 1973

„They are shaman-artists who constantly strive to look into the blueprint of creation beyond the visual crowd and the noise of superficial details, the one on task to explore and communicate with a primary game of opposite values during composition and construction of a coherent imagery. They paint from both levels, the personal and the intimate and the universal one which emerges from life-giving tension. Every Ink image, every Sumi-e painting, is a unique crossroad of oppositions, of directions, of intentions. They are all constant reminders of the duality of creation and the accuracy of the equation where two equals one.“

—  Alfred Freddy Krupa Croatian contemporary painter, master draughtsman, book artist and art teacher, the pioneer of the New Ink Art movement 1971

2010s

„The ultimate goal of all visual artistic activity is construction! Architects, painters and sculptors must learn again to know and understand the multi-faceted form of building in its entirety as well as its parts. Only then will they of their own accord fill their works with the architectonic spirit they have lost in the art of the salon. Let us establish a new guild of craftsmen without the presumption of class distinctions building a wall of arrogance between craftsmen and artists. Together let us call for, devise and create the construction of the future, comprising everything in one form: architecture, sculpture and painting.“

—  Walter Gropius German architect (1883-1969) and founder of the Bauhaus School 1883 - 1969

Manifesto (1919)