Quotes about brush
page 3

Pricasso photo

“[Pricasso] has achieved a good likeness and I can't imagine how he painted it without brushes or conventional equipment.”

Pricasso (1949) Australian painter

Mayor of Capetown Helen Zille — cited in: [Cape Argus staff, Artist uses a different stroke on Zille portrait, Cape Argus, South Africa, 7 May 2008, 3, Independent Online]
About

Jonah Goldberg photo
Alvin C. York photo
Nakayama Miki photo
Alfred Horsley Hinton photo

“The texture of the printed image is of such peculiar character that neither brush or liquid paint seem capable of imitating it.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton (1863–1908) British photographer

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, Printing the picture and controlling its formation, p. 90

Jean-François Lyotard photo
Kurt Schwitters photo
Matthew Arnold photo

“Still nursing the unconquerable hope,
Still clutching the inviolable shade,
With a free, onward impulse brushing through,
By night, the silver’d branches of the glade.”

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools

St. 22
The Scholar Gypsy (1853)

Andrew Ure photo

“The final tin-dip is useful to remove the marks of the brush, and to make the surface uniformly bright.”

Andrew Ure (1778–1857) Scottish doctor and chemist

1844, p. 1259.
A Dictionary of Arts, Manufactures, and Mines, 1844

Pricasso photo

“Visitors to the expo were amused and fascinated by portrait painter Pricasso and his unique brush.”

Pricasso (1949) Australian painter

[Daily News staff, Daily News, South Africa, Pole-dancing vixens keep visitors agog at Sexpo, 26 August 2011, 3, Independent Online]
About

Orson Pratt photo

“We planted our crops in the spring, and they came up, and were looking nicely, and we were cheered with the hopes of having a very abundant harvest. But alas! it very soon appeared as if our crops were going to be swallowed up by a vast horde of crickets, that came down from these mountains-crickets very different to what I used to be acquainted with in the State of New York. They were crickets nearly as large as a man's thumb. They came in immense droves, so that men and women with brush could make no headway against them; but we cried unto the Lord in our afflictions, and the Lord heard us, and sent thousands and tens of thousands of a small white bird. I have not seen any of them lately. Many called them gulls, although they were different from the seagulls that live on the Atlantic coast. And what did they do for us? They went to work, and by thousands and tens of thousands, began to devour them up, and still we thought that even they could not prevail against so large and mighty an army. But we noticed, that when they had apparently filled themselves with these crickets, they would go and vomit them up, and again go to work and fill themselves, and so they continued to do, until the land was cleared of crickets, and our crops were saved. There are those who will say that this was one of the natural courses of events, that there was no miracle in it. Let that be as it may, we esteemed it as a blessing from the hand of God; miracle or no miracle, we believe that God had a hand in it, and it does not matter particularly whether strangers believe or not.”

Orson Pratt (1811–1881) Apostle of the LDS Church

Journal of Discourses 21:276-277 (June 20,1880)
Pratt describes the event in which seagulls disposed of swarms of crickets that were destroying their crops.
Miracle of the seagulls and crickets

Bruno Schulz photo
Walter Rauschenbusch photo
Charles Stross photo
Tom Robbins photo
Edith Hamilton photo
Percival Lowell photo

“ Every individual word in a passage or poetry can no more be said to denote some specific referent than does every brush mark, every line in a painting have its counterpart in reality. The writer or speaker does not communicate his thoughts to us; he communicates a representation for carrying out, this function under the severe discipline of using the only materials he has, sound and gesture. Speech is like painting, a representation made out of given materials -- sound or paint. The function of speech is to stimulate and set up thoughts in us having correspondence with the speaker's desires; he has then communicated with us. But he has not transmitted a copy of his thoughts, a photograph, but only a stream of speech -- a substitute made from the unpromising material of sound. The artist, the sculptor, the caricaturist, the composer are akin in this [fact that they have not transmitted a copy of their thoughts], that they express (make representations of) their thoughts using chosen, limited materials. They make the "best" representations, within these self-imposed constraints. A child who builds models of a house, or a train, using only a few colored bricks, is essentially engaged in the same creative task.* Metaphors can play a most forceful role, by importing ideas through a vehicle language, setting up what are purely linguistic associations (we speak of "heavy burden of taxation," "being in a rut"). The imported concepts are, to some extent, artificial in their contexts, and they are by no means universal among different cultures. For instance, the concepts of cleanliness and washing are used within Christendom to imply "freedom from sin." We Westerners speak of the mind's eye, but this idea is unknown amongst the Chinese. that is, we are looking at it with the eyes of our English-speaking culture. A grammar book may help us to decipher the text more thoroughly, and help us comprehend something of the language structure, but we may never fully understand if we are not bred in the culture and society that has modeled and shaped the language. (p. 74)”

Colin Cherry (1914–1979) British scientist

See Gombrich in reference 348
On Human Communication (1957), Language: Science and Aesthetics

Nam June Paik photo
George Fitzhugh photo
Robert Charles Wilson photo
Tim Hawkins photo

“Lazy technology: the electric toothbrush—that always made me laugh. The electric toothbrush—what, is brushing your teeth too strenuous an exercise? For some people? You got people goin' [imitates fast, strenuous brushing of teeth]. "Man, I am really feeling the burn here. Wish this thing had a motor on it." Why don't you just have electric deodorant?”

Tim Hawkins (1968) Christian comedian, songwriter, and singer

imitates use of electric deodorant
Available on YouTube as " Tim Hawkins on Products https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MdVx6UYpHg" (uploaded 27 August 2007).
Full Range of Motion (2006)

Ralf Metzenmacher photo

“I'm a clown with brush and color.”

Ralf Metzenmacher (1964) German artist, designer and painter

Nürnberger Nachrichten, August 17, 2007

Pricasso photo

“The famous nude artist, Pricasso, who uses his member to paint, was kept busy swishing his "brush" over the canvas. He was quite a drawcard - and many a male observer whipped out his cellphone to take a picture.”

Pricasso (1949) Australian painter

[Daily News staff, Daily News, South Africa, Sexpo's popularity profitable for entrepreneurial granny, 6 February 2009, 5, Independent Online]
About

J.M.W. Turner photo

“Chantrey [good friend of Turner] is as gay and as good as ever, ready to serve: he requests, for my benefit, that you bottle up all the yellows which may be found straying out of the right way; but what you may have told him about the old masters which you did not tell me, I can't tell, but we expected to hear a great deal from each other, but the stormy brush of Tintoretto was only to make the 'Notte' more visible.”

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

Quote from Turner's letter, London Feb. 1830, to his friend George Jones in Rome; as cited in 'The life of J.M.W. Turner', Volume II, George Walter Thornbury; https://ia801207.us.archive.org/18/items/lifeofjmwturnerr02thor/lifeofjmwturnerr02thor.pdf Hurst and Blackett Publishers, London, 1862, p. 234
1821 - 1851

Charlotte Perkins Gilman photo

“For many years I suffered from a severe and continuous nervous breakdown tending to melancholia — and beyond. During about the third year of this trouble I went, in devout faith and some faint stir of hope, to a noted specialist in nervous diseases, the best known in the country. This wise man put me to bed and applied the rest cure, to which a still-good physique responded so promptly that he concluded there was nothing much the matter with me, and sent me home with solemn advice to "live as domestic a life as far as possible," to "have but two hours' intellectual life a day," and "never to touch pen, brush, or pencil again" as long as I lived. This was in 1887.
I went home and obeyed those directions for some three months, and came so near the borderline of utter mental ruin that I could see over.
Then, using the remnants of intelligence that remained, and helped by a wise friend, I cast the noted specialist's advice to the winds and went to work again — work, the normal life of every human being; work, in which is joy and growth and service, without which one is a pauper and a parasite — ultimately recovering some measure of power.
Being naturally moved to rejoicing by this narrow escape, I wrote The Yellow Wallpaper, with its embellishments and additions, to carry out the ideal (I never had hallucinations or objections to my mural decorations) and sent a copy to the physician who so nearly drove me mad. He never acknowledged it.”

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) American feminist, writer, commercial artist, lecturer and social reformer

"Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper" in The Forerunner (October 1913) http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/whyyw.html

Marsden Hartley photo

“[I was] happily contended to be climbing the heights and the clouds by the brush method.... rendering the God-spirit in the mountains.”

Marsden Hartley (1877–1943) American artist

letter to Horace Traubel around 1908; as quoted in Marsden Hartley, by Gail R. Scott, Abbeville Publishers, Cross River Press, 1988, New York p. 18
1908 - 1920

Karel Appel photo

“My brush-strokes start in nothing and they end in nothing, and in-between you find the image.”

Karel Appel (1921–2006) Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet

Quote from 'The eye of the beholder', Carlo McCormick
Karel Appel – the complete sculptures,' (1990) not-paged

Pentti Linkola photo
José Martí photo

“Newspapers, universities and schools should encourage the study of the country's pertinent components. To know them is sufficient, without mincing words; for whoever brushes aside even a part of the truth, whether through intention or oversight, is doomed to fall. The truth he lacks thrives on negligence, and brings down whatever is built without it. It is easy to resolve our problem knowing its components than resolve them without knowing them.”

José Martí (1853–1895) Poet, writer, Cuban nationalist leader

Our America (1881)
Original: (es) En el periódico, en la cátedra, en la academia, debe llevarse adelante el estudio de los factores reales del país. Conocerlos basta, sin vendas ni ambages; porque el que pone de lado, por voluntad u olvido, una parte de la verdad, cae a la larga por la verdad que le faltó, que crece en la negligencia, y derriba lo que se levanta sin ella. Resolver el problema después de conocer sus elementos, es más fácil que resolver el problema sin conocerlos.

Variant translation: In the newspapers, lecture halls, and academies, the study of the country's real factors must be carried forward. Simply knowing those factors without blindfolds or circumlocutions is enough — for anyone who deliberately or unknowingly sets aside a part of the truth will ultimately fail because of the truth he was lacking, which expands when neglected and brings down whatever is built without it. Solving the problem after knowing its elements is easier than solving it without knowing them.
Ref: en.wikiquote.org - José Martí / Quotes / Our America (1891)

Jopie Huisman photo

“I used to paint some things a few times, but I stopped, because I didn't get an answer. If the work has nothing to say to somebody else, I quit. I am not an idiot who is talking to himself and gazing at the tip of his brush. Painting you do together.”

Jopie Huisman (1922–2000) Dutch painter

translation, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
version in original Dutch / citaat van Jopie Huisman, in het Nederlands: Voorheen heb ik ook wel eens wat geschilderd, maar omdat ik toen geen antwoord kreeg, ben ik ermee gestopt. Als het een ander niets te zeggen heeft, stop ik ermee. Ik ben geen idioot die in zichzelf zit te praten en naar de punt van het penseel zit te staren. Schilderen doe je met elkaar.
Source: Jopie Huisman', 1981, p. 57

“[Frank] Stella is not interested in expression or sensitivity. He is interested in the necessity of painting... His stripes are the paths of brush on canvas. These path leads only into painting.”

Carl Andre (1935) American artist

quote c. 1959, in 'Preface to Stripe Painting', by Carl Andre, in Sixteen Americans ed. Miller, p. 76
Andre's remark is referring to Andre's close artist-friend Frank Stella, the American minimalist painter

Maurice de Vlaminck photo

“I wanted to burn down the 'École de Beaux Arts' with my cobalts and vermilions and I wanted to express my feelings with my brushes without troubling what painting was like before me... Life and me, me and life.”

Maurice de Vlaminck (1876–1958) French painter

Quote of De Vlaminck; as cited in Picasso, Matisse and Modernism in Paris 1900-1910, Sue Roe; Penguin Press, 2015; quoted in 'Becoming an Artist' on Widewalls https://www.widewalls.ch/artist/maurice-de-vlaminck/
Quotes undated

Kate Bush photo

“Oh will you come with us
To find the song of the oil and the brush?”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Aerial (2005), A Sky of Honey (Disc 2)

Friedensreich Hundertwasser photo
Jackson Pollock photo
Arthur Wesley Dow photo
Brian Greene photo

“Physicists are more like avant-garde composers, willing to bend traditional rules and brush the edge of acceptability in the search for solutions.”

The Elegant Universe : Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory (1999), p. 271
Context: Physicists are more like avant-garde composers, willing to bend traditional rules and brush the edge of acceptability in the search for solutions. Mathematicians are more like classical composers, typically working within a much tighter framework, reluctant to go to the next step until all previous ones have been established with due rigor. Each approach has its advantages as well as drawbacks; each provides a unique outlet for creative discovery. Like modern and classical music, it’s not that one approach is right and the other wrong – the methods one chooses to use are largely a matter of taste and training.

Alvin C. York photo

“We were deep in the brush and we couldn't see the Germans and they couldn't see us. But we could hear their machine guns shooting something awful.”

Alvin C. York (1887–1964) United States Army Medal of Honor recipient

Account of 8 October 1918.
Diary of Alvin York
Context: We were deep in the brush and we couldn't see the Germans and they couldn't see us. But we could hear their machine guns shooting something awful. Savage's squad was leading, and mine, Early's and Cutting's followed. — And when we jumped across a little stream of water that was there, they was about 15 or 20 Germans jumped up and threw up their hands and said, "Kamerad!" So the one in charge of us boys told us not to shoot: they was going to give up anyway.
It was headquarters. There were orderlies, stretcher bearers and runners, and a major and two other officers, They were just having breakfast and there was a mess of beef-steaks, jellies, jams, and loaf bread around. They were unarmed, all except the major.
We jumped them right smart and covered them, and told them to throw up their hands and to keep them up. And they did. I guess they thought the whole American army was in their rear. And we didn't stop to tell them anything different. No shots were fired, and there was no talking between us except when we told them to "put them up."

Yasunari Kawabata photo

“When we see the beauty of the snow, when we see the beauty of the full moon, when we see the beauty of the cherries in bloom, when in short we brush against and are awakened by the beauty of the four seasons, it is then that we think most of those close to us, and want them to share the pleasure.”

Yasunari Kawabata (1899–1972) Japanese author, Nobel Prize winner

Japan, the Beautiful and Myself (1969)
Context: Dr. Yashiro Yukio, internationally known as a scholar of Botticelli, a man of great learning in the art of the past and the present, of the East and the West, has summed up one of the special characteristics of Japanese art in a single poetic sentence: "The time of the snows, of the moon, of the blossoms — then more than ever we think of our comrades." When we see the beauty of the snow, when we see the beauty of the full moon, when we see the beauty of the cherries in bloom, when in short we brush against and are awakened by the beauty of the four seasons, it is then that we think most of those close to us, and want them to share the pleasure. The excitement of beauty calls forth strong fellow feelings, yearnings for companionship, and the word "comrade" can be taken to mean "human being". The snow, the moon, the blossoms, words expressive of the seasons as they move one into another, include in the Japanese tradition the beauty of mountains and rivers and grasses and trees, of all the myriad manifestations of nature, of human feelings as well.

Alvin C. York photo
Franz Bardon photo
Alvin C. York photo
Henry Ossawa Tanner photo

“No, father, you preach from the pulpit and I will preach with my brush.”

Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859–1937) American painter

On a story he used to tell about his father wanting him to be a preacher, which Tanner himself referred to as a “pretty story” (as quoted in “Henry Ossawa Tanner: Race, Religion, and Visual Mysticism” https://fsu.digital.flvc.org/islandora/object/fsu:169182/datastream/PDF/view (Florida State University Libraries, 2003)

Don DeLillo photo
Jonathan Safran Foer photo
Marilyn Ferguson photo

“Art is my language, pens and brushes are my armor.”

Frome the Drawings "Angels" and "Epiphany"

Harry Gordon Selfridge photo

“[T]he artist sells the work of his brush and in this he is a merchant. The writer sells to any who will buy, let his ideas be what they will. The teacher sells his knowledge of books—often in too low a market—to those who would have this knowledge passed on to the young.
The doctor... too is a merchant. His stock-in-trade is his intimate knowledge of the physical man and his skill to prevent or remove disabilities. ...The lawyer sometimes knows the laws of the land and sometimes does not, but he sells his legal language, often accompanied by common sense, to the multitude who have not yet learned that a contentious nature may squander quite as successfully as the spendthrift. The statesman sells his knowledge of men and affairs, and the spoken or written exposition of his principles of Government; and he receives in return the satisfaction of doing what he can for his nation, and occasionally wins as well a niche in its temple of fame.
The man possessing many lands, he especially would be a merchant... and sell, but his is a merchandise which too often nowadays waits in vain for the buyer. The preacher, the lecturer, the actor, the estate agent, the farmer, the employé, all, all are merchants, all have something to dispose of at a profit to themselves, and the dignity of the business is decided by the manner in which they conduct the sale.”

Harry Gordon Selfridge (1858–1947) America born English businessman

The Romance of Commerce (1918), Concerning Commerce

Ron English photo

“It’s not the size of the brush; it’s the expanse of the imagination.”

Ron English (1959) American artist

Ron English's Fauxlosophy (2016)

Winston S. Churchill photo

“The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is. Most people, sometime in their lives, stumble across truth. Most jump up, brush themselves off, and hurry on about their business, as if nothing happened.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

As quoted in, but without a documented source: Joseph Romanella (2012): Adam's Dream: Is Everything We Think, Believe, and Perceive Real—or Is It All Imaginary? https://books.google.de/books?id=vjQvJ1EITDkC&pg=PR30&lpg=PR30&dq=The+truth+is+incontrovertible.+Malice+may+attack+it,+ignorance+may+deride+it,+but+in+the+end,+there+it+is.+source&source=bl&ots=2z1rN6iBG6&sig=ACfU3U20jzEJtXfaAFYwx1K2zhzOOFzkog&hl=de&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjQuemItuLpAhUNxqYKHR_LDccQ6AEwAnoECAUQAQ#v=onepage&q=The%20truth%20is%20incontrovertible.%20Malice%20may%20attack%20it%2C%20ignorance%20may%20deride%20it%2C%20but%20in%20the%20end%2C%20there%20it%20is.%20source&f=false, page xxx. ISBN: 978-1-4525-0823-8 (sc). ISBN: 978-1-4525-0824-5 (e). Bloomington, Indiana, United States of America: Balboa Press, a division of Hay House.
Disputed

Edgar Guest photo