Quotes about easel

A collection of quotes on the topic of easel, painting, paint, work.

Quotes about easel

“Since I think just in pictures it's sort of hard to think about abstract concepts so I have to have visual images like for example when I was a child I didn't really understand some of the stuff in the Lord's Prayer and y'know when it talks about "the power and the glory"… and I thought "electrical high tension lines, circular rainbow." "Thou art in Heaven"; that didn't make any sense to me but another autistic person says "Well I always pictured God up in Heaven with an easel."”

Temple Grandin (1947) USA-american doctor of animal science, author, and autism activist

First Person (TV series) Episode 1 "Stairway to Heaven" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Person_(TV_series)#Season_1

God, Art, Understanding, Thinking

“[While working beneath the cliff at Manneport, Normandy] I didn't see a huge wave coming; it threw me against the cliff and I was tossed about in its wake along with all my materials! My immediate thought was that I was done for, as the water dragged me down, but in the end I managed to clamber out on all fours, but Lord, what a state I was in! My boots, my thick stockings and my coat were soaked through. The palette which I had kept a grip on had been knocked over my face and my beard was covered in blue, yellow etc. But anyway, now the excitement is passed and no harm's done, the worst of it was that I lost my painting which was very soon broken up, along with my easel, bag etc. Impossible to fish anything out. Besides, everything was torn to shreds by the sea, that "old hag" as you sister calls her.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

in a letter from Etretat to Alice Hoschedé, 1884; as quoted in: Howard F. Isham (2004) Image of the Sea: Oceanic Consciousness in the Romantic Century. p. 337
1870 - 1890

Fish, Sister, Water, Painting

“Near the northern boundary of Malaya, Japanese took a sudden interest in taking photos and setting up easels to paint. The same thing happened in Johor Bahru. A causeway crosses the Straits of Johor. If you're facing Singapore island, on the left side of the causeway was Seletar. The Japanese would set up easels and paint Seletar. All of them were spies.”

Robert Kuok (1923) Malaysian businessman

Cap 2 "The Wuhan Songsters"

Photo, Painting

“I believe easel painting to be a dying form, and the tendency of modern feeling is toward the wall picture or mural..”

Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) American artist

In his application for a grant given by the Guggenheim Foundation 1944; as quoted in Abstract expressionism, Barbara Hess, Taschen Köln, 2006, p. 9
1940's

Feeling, Painting

“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 (1824–1898) French painter

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

Nature, Painting

“What are you doing here?”
All right, he was standing in front of an easel, holding a paint palette and brush. “Taxidermy?” he responded with just a touch of his own sarcasm.”

Robyn Carr American writer

Source: Wild Man Creek

Painting

“Decoration. Very rapidly executed, at one go, spontaneously [reflection of making a mural on the site for the terrace plaza hotel in Cincinnati]. What takes a long time in my case is the work of silent reflection; it is impossible for me to predict the duration of this preparatory period. You have to keep in mind that it is by no means a matter of just doing a large picture, and though it will not be possible to paint a true mural by attacking the wall directly, in fresco, to do so will require persistence while maintaining, as much as possible, the spirit of the great tradition of mural painting. I shall have to go to Cincinnati in advance as soon as I can, to view the architecture and its environs, because otherwise I would only create an easel painting in large format.”

Joan Miró (1893–1983) Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist

In a letter to Pierre Matisse, 26 January 1946; as quoted in Calder Miro, ed. Elizabeth Hutton Turner / Oliver Wick; Philip Wilson Publishers, London 2004, p. 70
1940 - 1960

Time, Painting

“To answer your first question - most significantly the [ Federal Art Project ] project was my training ground in the real sense of the word. I feel very strongly about this. We were all poor, or most of us, and to have the time and opportunity to continue working - I was then in my twenties which is the important period - the crucial period for the young painter. This was most important and figures significantly in my own development. Although I feel that my personal image as a painter did not come about until I began my easel painting with personal imagery which was about 1941. The project kept me alive and working - it was my education.”

Phillip Guston (1913–1980) American artist

n.p.
1961 - 1980, Oral history interview with Philip Guston, 1965 January 29

Education, Art, Feeling, Question

“We must take note of the fact that the artist nowadays is occupied with painting flags, posters, pots and pans textiles and things like that. What is referred to as 'artistic work' has on the vast majority of occasions nothing whatever to do with creative effort: and the term 'artistic work' is used in order to demonstrate the 'sacredness' of the work which the artist does at his easel. The conception of 'artistic work' presupposes a distinction between useful and useless work and as there are only a few artists buyers can be found even for their useless products. The artist's work lies beyond the boundaries of the useful and the useless.”

El Lissitsky (1890–1941) Soviet artist, designer, photographer, teacher, typographer and architect

1915 - 1925, Suprematism' in World Reconstruction (1920)

Effort, Painting

“.. and the first thing for he artists [of Die Brücke ] was free drawing from the free human figure in the freedom of nature... We drew and we painted. Hundreds of paintings a day, with talk and fooling in between, the artists joining the models before the easel and vice versa. All the encounters of everyday life were incorporated in our memories in this way. The studio became the home of the people who were being drawn; they learned from the artists and the painters from them. The picture [ made] took on immediate and abundant life.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) German painter, sculptor, engraver and printmaker

Quote from Kirchner's Diary, 1923; as cited in Expressionism, de:Wolf-Dieter Dube; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 28-29
1920's

Life, People, Fools, Way

“.. I think the thing that hit me most of all [at the Pollock-show, 1951] was that while I knew it was a fact, it became a physical necessity to get pictures off the easel, and therefore for me not even on a wall but the reach or fluidity of working from above down into a field [so: on the floor].... But it really registered [later] when I saw his [Pollock's] studio and he unrolled his paintings on the floor that he had painted them on. Now I was never drawn to the idea of a stick dipped in a huge can. One thing I have never liked is a drip, I mean.. it's a kind of boring accident to me, a drip. There are many accidents that are very rich that you use, but if you exploit a drip it's very boring and familiar to begin with. Drips are drips. Whereas blocks have never been drips, and haven't been, but, people don't know blocks the way they know drips. And blocks can become lines, and drips become lines in a very facile, easy way.”

Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) American artist

quote about Pollock's drip-painting, 1951
1960s, Interview with Barbara Rose', Archives - American Art, 1968

People, Way, Idea, Thinking

“He (Delacroix) turns David [French painter] upside down. His painting is iridescent. Seeing one Constable [famous English landscape painter, admired by French painters, then] is enough to make him understand all the possibilities of landscape, and he too sets up his easel by the sea... And he has a sense of human being, of life in movement, of warmth. Everything moves, every glistens. The light!... There is more warm light in this interior [probably: Delacroix's 'Woman of Algiers'] of his than in all of Corot's landscapes..”

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) French painter

Source: Quotes of Paul Cezanne, after 1900, Cézanne, - a Memoir with Conversations, (1897 - 1906), p. 196 in: 'What he told me – II. The Louvre'

Life, Understanding, Sense, Light

“Now at least 'artists have the upper hand' in the town (Vitebsk). They get totally engrossed in their disputes about art (between constructivists and suprematists), I am utterly exhausted and 'dream' of 'abroad'… After all, there is no more suitable place for artists to be (for me, at least) than at the easel, and I dream of being able to devote myself exclusively to my pictures. Of course, little by little one paints something, but it's not the real thing.”

Marc Chagall (1887–1985) French artist and painter

Chagall was director of the Art School of Vitebsk, including many conflicts
Quote in his letter to Pavel Davidovitch Ettering, 2 April, 1920, as quoted in Marc Chagall - the Russian years 1906 – 1922, editor Christoph Vitali, exhibition catalogue, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 1991, p. 74
1920's

School, Dreams, Art, Painting

“.. that zone of consciousness through which all artists travel mentally, before ever approaching the easel.”

Eugène Fromentin (1820–1876) French painter

Quote from Eugène Fromentin: a Life in art and Letters, ed. Barbara Wright; Peter Lang, Bern 2000, p. 276

Travel

“Still reeling from the buzzing of German-designed appliances, and desperately trying to find a stall that served coffee and muffins instead of edible knickers and herbal elixirs, I watched bemused at the Sexpo as the craggy Pricasso dipped his dangly bit into paint and dabbed at a piece of paper on the easel.”

Pricasso (1949) Australian painter

[Cape Argus staff, Put an end to dangling conversations, Cape Argus, South Africa, 16 September 2008, 13, Independent Online]
About

Coffee, Painting

“It was only in the evenings that I played the violin [c. 1999-1901, to earn his money for living]. During the day I was free to spend my time as I wished. With a few colours in a box, a canvas and a cheap easel under my arm, I would make my way to the Banks of the Seine... I painted to restore my peace of mind, to calm my desires and, above all, to purify myself a little... Make a career of painting. How I would have laughed if someone had talked to me about that! To be a painter is not a profession, no more than being an anarchist or a lover, a race-track rider..”

Maurice de Vlaminck (1876–1958) French painter

Source: Quotes dated, Dangerous Corner', 1929, p. 66

Money, Peace, Way, Lovers

“The portability of the book, like that of the easel-painting, added much to the new culture of individualism.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1960s, The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 233

Books, Painting

“It was very tiny, our house [ St. Prex ], and I had no room for my own, only a window, which I could call mine. But I was so gloomy and unhappy in my soul after all those dreadful experiences, that I was quite content to sit at the window and quietly collect my thoughts and feelings. I had a bit of paint but no easel, so I went into Lausanne – twenty minutes on the train – and bought a small easel from a photographer... It was highly unsuitable for painting but for more than twenty years I have painted my best work on that little easel”

Alexej von Jawlensky (1864–1941) Russian painter

in mainly small sizes
from: 'Lebenserinnerungen', 1938
This small house was in St. Prex, in Switzerland, lake Genova, where Jawlensky concentrated himself on the view around his house in the years after 1914.. ..he painted here more than 400 'Variations on a landscape theme', in St. Prex
Source: 1936 - 1941, Life Memories' (1938), p. 186

Feeling, Soul, Painting, Housing

“In 1949, I ceased figurative painting and began works that were object oriented. The drawings from plant life seem to be a bridge to the way of seeing that brought about the paintings in 1949 that are the basis for all my later work. After arriving in Paris in 1948, I realized that figurative painting and also abstract painting (though my knowledge of the latter was very limited) as I had known in the 20th century no longer interested me as a solution to my own problems. I wanted to give up easel painting which I felt was too personal.”

Ellsworth Kelly (1923–2015) American painter, sculptor, and printmaker

Source: 1969 - 1980, In: "Ellsworth Kelly: Works on Paper," 1987, p. 9 : 'Notes from 1969'

Life, Way, Knowledge, Problem

“As the paintings the 'Night Watch' and the 'Staalmeesters' [famous works of Rembrandt ] are showed now it is clear to everyone that they have searched but, indeed messed with it, to enable these paintings to do what they can do [visually]. But you see, they did not find a good solution just because they appreciated the museum itself [a rather new building, then! ] higher than the paintings themselves. I told at the very first opening of the Rijksmuseum [1885] already everyone who wanted to listen to me: in this room, where the Night Watch' is hanging now, it can never comes to its full right…. There must be built for the 'Night Watch' and for the 'Staalmeesters' a separate room each…. [with] standing light and the paintings positioned on an easel or standard behind…. I just want to add here, that my own studio can serve as a very special model…. concerning the sizes and the lighting.”

Jozef Israëls (1824–1911) Dutch painter

Quote from Israëls' letter to the Dutch Minister S. van Houten, 4 Nov. 1894; as cited in In het Rijksmuseum, Jan Veth (translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek); Holkema's Boekhandel http://docplayer.nl/42488824-In-het-rijksmuseum-door-jan-veth-met-twee-brieven-van-jozef-israels-holkema-s-boekhandel-i-4-november-mdcccxciv.html, Amsterdam, 1894, p. 10<br>During Israel's whole artistic life Rembrandt was his inspiration and had a strong impact on his own painting-style <br class="br">Quotes of Jozef Israels, 1871 - 1900

Search, Light, Painting, Night

“My painting does not come from the easel. I hardly ever stretch my canvas before painting. I prefer to tack the unstretched canvas to the hard wall or the floor. I need the resistance of a hard surface. On the floor I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more a part of the painting, since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting. This is akin to the method of the Indian sand painters of the West.”

Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) American artist

Quote from 'Possibilities' Vol. 1, no 1, winter 1947-48, p. 79; as cited in 'Jackson Pollock: is he the greatest living painter in the United States?', in 'Life' (8 August 1949), pp. 42-45
1940's

Way, Feeling, Parting, Painting

“to try also, inasmuch as possible, to go beyond easel painting, which in my opinion has a narrow goal, and to bring myself closer, through painting, to the human masses I have never stopped thinking about.”

Joan Miró (1893–1983) Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist

1915 - 1940
Source: 'Je rêve d'un grand atelier', Miro 1938; as quoted in Calder Miró, ed. Elizabeth Hutton Turner / Oliver Wick; Philip Wilson Publishers, London 2004, p. 65

Thinking, Painting

“Well, painting today certainly seems very vibrant, very alive, very exiting. Five or six of my contemporaries around New York are doing very vital work, and the direction that painting seems to be taken here – is – away from the easel – into some sort, some kind of wall, wall painting…”

Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) American artist

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

Painting

“I am trying to intensify my feeling for the organic rhythm in all things, trying to establish a pantheistic contact with the tremor and flow of blood in nature, in animals, in the air – trying to make it all into a picture, with new movements and with colours that reduce our old easel paintings to absurdity.”

Franz Marc (1880–1916) German painter

Quote in Marc's letter to the publisher Reinhard Piper, 1908, as cited in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, ed. Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 207
1905 - 1910

Feeling, Nature, Animals, Painting

“PROUN alters the conventional forms of the arts and leaves behind the image of the petty individualist, who locked himself in his office and hid seated before a drawing easel, starting one picture and finishing another.
The future life — this is the reinforced concrete slab for the communist foundation of the nations of the entire world. With the aid of the PROUN one can build a unified city-commune on that foundation, intended for the life of all mankind.”

El Lissitsky (1890–1941) Soviet artist, designer, photographer, teacher, typographer and architect

1915 - 1925, Theses on the 'PROUN': from painting to architecture' (1920)

Life, World, Art, Communication

“The era that humanity has entered is an era of industrial development and therefore the organisation of artistic elements must be applied to the design of the material elements of everyday life, i. e. to industry or to so-called production. The new industrial production, in which artistic creativity must participate, will differ radically from the traditional aesthetic approach to the object, in that primarily attention will be focused not on the artistic decoration of the object (applied art), but on the artistic organisation of the object in accordance with the principles of creating the most utilitarian object.... If any of the different types of fine art (i. e., easel painting, drawing, engraving, sculpture, etc.) can still retain some purpose, they will do so only * 1. while they remain as the laboratory phase in our search for essential new forms * 2. insofar as they serve as supportive projects and schemes for constructions and utilitarian and industrially manufactured objects that have yet to be realised”

Lyubov Popova (1889–1924) Russian artist

Liubov Popova, untitled manuscript, signed and dated December 1921, Manuscript Department, State Tretjakov Gallery, Moscow, (fond 148, op.17, l. 3–4); transl. John Bowlt; the same text is reproduced in Women Artists of the Russian Avant-Garde 1910–1930, Cologne 1979, p. 68

Life, Art, Search, Support

“When I'm sitting in front of my easel again… I'm going to make things that no one would have expected of me. (translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)”

Jacob Maris (1837–1899) Dutch painter

version in original Dutch / citaat van Jacob Maris, in het Nederlands: Als ik maar weêr voor den ezel zit.. ..ik ga dingen maken, die men niet van me verwacht zou hebben.
as cited by M. van Heteren e.a., Jacob Maris (1837-1899). Ik denk in mijn materie, (exp. cat. Haarlem, Teylers Museum / Oss, Museum Jan Cunen) Zwolle 2003, p. 144
a remark of Jacob, just before his death

“Kairos can sometimes enter, penetrate, break through chronos: the child at play, the painter at his easel, Serkin playing the Appassionata are in kairos. The saint in prayer, friends around the dinner table, the mother reaching out her arms for her newborn baby are in kairos.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Section 4.21 
The Crosswicks Journal, A Circle of Quiet (1972)
Context: Chronology, the time which changes things, makes them grow older, wears them out, and manages to dispose of them, chronologically, forever.
Thank God there is kairos too: again the Greeks were wiser than we are. They had two words for time: chronos and kairos.
Kairos is not measurable. Kairos is ontological. In kairos we are, we are fully in isness, not negatively, as Sartre saw the isness of the oak tree, but fully, wholly, positively. Kairos can sometimes enter, penetrate, break through chronos: the child at play, the painter at his easel, Serkin playing the Appassionata are in kairos. The saint in prayer, friends around the dinner table, the mother reaching out her arms for her newborn baby are in kairos. The bush, the burning bush, is in kairos, not any burning bush, but the particular burning bush before which Moses removed his shoes; the bush I pass by on my way to the brook. In kairos that part of us which is not consumed in the burning is wholly awake.

Baby

“I believe—when somebody gave me a pencil and a sheet of paper—was to create a world for myself, basically. It sort of made everything fall to the wayside. The environment where I was growing up, the poverty—all of that just sort of fell to the wayside, and I was able to create these worlds and enter into it. And I think that sort of isolated me a lot from other kids in the neighborhood, even isolated me while I was going to school. And my earliest recollections of entering school was the times when it was art time, and they had easels and they had paint and they had brushes…”

Gronk (artist) (1954) American artist

On when he discovered his love for art in “Oral history interview with Gronk, 1997 Jan. 20-23” https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-gronk-13586#transcript (Smithsonian Archives of American Art)

School, Painting, Time, Art

“When I'm sitting in front of my easel again.. .I'm going to make things that no one would have expected of me.”

Jacob Maris (1837–1899) Dutch painter

translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
version in original Dutch / citaat van Jacob Maris, in het Nederlands: Als ik maar weêr voor den ezel zit.. ..ik ga dingen maken, die men niet van me verwacht zou hebben.
as cited by M. van Heteren e.a., Jacob Maris (1837-1899). Ik denk in mijn materie, (exp. cat. Haarlem, Teylers Museum / Oss, Museum Jan Cunen) Zwolle 2003, p. 144
a remark of Jacob, just before his death

Making love