“Just to paint a representation or design is not hard, but to express a thought in painting is. Thought is fluid. What you put on canvas is concrete, and it tends to direct the thought. The more you punt on canvas the more you lose control of the thought. I’ve never been able to paint what I set out to paint.”
1941 - 1967
Source: Three Hundred Years of American Painting, Alexander Eliot; New York: Time Inc., 1957, p. 298
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Edward Hopper 48
prominent American realist painter and printmaker 1882–1967Related quotes

“The thoughts we choose to think are the tools we use to paint the canvas of our lives.”

“The only control that I excercize [in painting] is to not throw too much paint next to the canvas.”
MR1, 177; p. 215
Karel Appel, a gesture of colour' (1992/2009)
Source: Posthumous quotes, Abstract Expressionist Painting in America, (1983), p. 135 : original source: 'Willem de Kooning', in 'Moma Bulletin' pp. 6,7

Source: 1961 - 1980, transcript of a public forum at Boston university', conducted by Joseph Ablow 1966, p. 67

Source: 1950's, Interview by William Wright, Summer 1950, p. 144

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

(original Dutch, citaat van B.C. Koekkoek:) Ik maak vooraf geene tekeningen van het voorwerp of de voorwerpen, die ik op het doek of paneel wil schilderen.. ..maar begin dadelijk het ontworpen plan op het doek te plaatsen – Na mijne compositie eerst behoorlijk geschetst en beredeneerd te hebben, voornamelijk de schikking van licht en donker, begin ik dezelve met olieverw breed te schilderen, zoveel trachtende de tint of het coloriet er in te brengen, in welke ik mijn landschap.. ..wil gezien hebben.. ..als het geheel afgeschilderd is.
Source: Herinneringen aan en Mededeelingen van…' (1841), p. 98-99

Propositions, 2
1870 - 1903, The Gentle Art of Making Enemies' (1890)

“They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn't. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.”
Quoted in Time Magazine, "Mexican Autobiography" (27 April 1953)
1946 - 1953
Variant: I don't paint dreams or nightmares, I paint my own reality.