Top 100 Art Painting Quotes
#1. Anything can be art: painting stairs, raising a child, or organising a trip to the end of the world. It's the way you live that makes you either an artist, or an art connoisseur, or an unsatisfied critic.
Mykyta Isagulov
#2. Why not spend that time on art: painting, sculpting, charcoal, pastel, oils? Are words or numbers more important than images? Who decides this? Does algebra move you to tears? Can plural possessives express the feelings in your heart? If you don't learn art now, you will never learn to breathe!
Laurie Halse Anderson
#3. In our world, in which religious images are losing their meaning, in which our customs are getting more and more secular, we are losing our sense of the eternal. I think it's a loss that has done a great deal of damage to modern art. Painting is a return to origins.
Antoni Tapies
#4. To me, art begets art. Painting feeds the eye just as poetry feeds the ear, which is to say that both feed the soul.
Susan Vreeland
#5. What counts is art. painting, a kind of painting that is quite different from what everyone makes it out to be. But what kind? Will God or someone else give me the strength to breathe the breath of prayer and mourning into my paintings, the breath of prayer for redemption and resurrection?
Marc Chagall
#6. There are three forms of visual art: Painting is art to look at, sculpture is art you can walk around, and architecture is art you can walk through
Dan Rice
#7. Only when painting isn't painting can there be an affront to modesty.
Pablo Picasso
#8. Art, if it is successful in the task of questioning reality, if it is good painting and not merely a performance of dexterity, will be an affirmation of God.
Patrick Swift
#9. Art itself, in all its methods, is the child of religion. The highest and best works in architecture, sculpture and painting, poetry and music, have been born out of the religion of Nature.
James Freeman Clarke
#10. He who has learned what is commonly considered the whole art of painting, that is, the art of representing any natural object faithfully, has as yet only learned the language by which his thoughts are to be expressed.
John Ruskin
#11. When you start working, everybody is in your studio- the past, your friends, enemies, the art world, and above all, your own ideas- all are there. But as you continue painting, they start leaving, one by one, and you are left completely alone. Then, if you are lucky, even you leave.
John Cage
#12. He that would be a painter must have a natural turn thereto. Love and delight therein are better of the Art of Painting than compulsion.
Albrecht Durer
#13. Pop Art is not painting because painting must have content and emotion.
Grace Hartigan
#14. We often hear the terms 'positional' and 'tactical' used as opposites. But this is as wrong as to consider a painting's composition unrelated to its subject. Just as there is no such thing as 'artistic' art, so there is no such thing as 'positional' chess.
Samuel Reshevsky
#15. In every form of art, you really want the experience of the images to transcend the medium, for the medium to disappear into the greater experience of viewing the work. So that you forget you are looking at a painting, or a photograph.
Bill Henson
#16. I've always been a creative person, and I'd always wanted to paint, so I went to art school and began painting and sculpting.
Shirley Eaton
#17. I am more a friend of art than a producer of painting.
Paul Cezanne
#18. I began to see cinema as the perfect combination of so many wonderful art forms - painting, photography, music, dance, theater.
James Gray
#19. Painting, which is essentially a rhythmic harmony of coloured spaces. Realism was the death of art. Great art should come from the harmony of two lines.
Arthur Wesley Dow
#20. Painting is an essentially concrete art and can only consist of the representation of real and existing things.
Gustave Courbet
#21. Weirdly, an image of Adrian's Love painting came back to me. I thought of the jagged red streak, slashing through the blackness, ripping it
apart. Staring at Jill and her inconsolable pain, I suddenly understood his art a little bit better.
Richelle Mead
#22. It is not hard to understand modern art. If it hangs on a wall it's a painting, and if you can walk around it it's a sculpture.
Tom Stoppard
#23. A painting is worth a thousand confused art-gallery visitors.
Ljupka Cvetanova
#24. All art is exorcism. I paint dreams and visions too; the dreams and visions of my time. Painting is the effort to produce order; order in yourself. There is much chaos in me, much chaos in our time.
Otto Dix
#25. Through a painting we can see the whole world.
Hans Hofmann
#26. I couldn't live on the singing at first, so I worked as a cleaner, in a launderette, in a garage, face painting and doing the windows of shops at Christmas, 'cause I had been to art college.
Imelda May
#27. Initially I explored the tension between illustration and fine art when I first encountered miniature painting in my late teens. Championing the formal aspects of the Indo-Persian miniature-painting genre has often been at the core of my practice.
Shahzia Sikander
#28. Kenji Mizoguchi is to the cinema what Bach is to music, Cervantes is to literature, Shakespeare is to theatre, Titian is to painting: the very greatest.
Jean Douchet
#29. Whence did the wond'rous mystic art arise, / Of painting SPEECH, and speaking to the eyes? / That we by tracing magic lines are taught, / How to embody, and to colour THOUGHT?
Marshall McLuhan
#30. It was a miserable machine, an inefficient machine, she thought, the human apparatus for painting or for feeling; it always broke down at the critical moment; heroically, one must force it on.
Virginia Woolf
#31. Everyone who has any talent at all in sketching, painting, sculpturing or carving, should have the opportunity to use that talent. The expression is important for the person, and can tremendously enrich the lives of other people. What can you do?
Edith Schaeffer
#32. I will give a proof to demonstrate with facts that there are no rules in painting and that oppression or servile obligation of making all study or follow the same path is a great impediment for the young who profess this very difficult art.
Francisco Goya
#33. Painting is an infinitely minute part of my personality.
Salvador Dali
#34. Art was always my thing. I had an art scholarship before I had a football scholarship. I'm a left-handed, right-brained, painting-drawing guy. That was always my skill.
Terry Crews
#35. If it weren't for how esoteric the art world likes to be, I would love actually to play the music in the shows, painting the music that influences me most.
Damian Loeb
#36. Surely nothing has to listen to so many stupid remarks as a painting in a museum.
Edmond De Goncourt
#37. A painting which does not take its inspiration from the heart is nothing more than futile juggling.
Caspar David Friedrich
#38. Without atmosphere a painting is nothing.
Rembrandt
#39. For me, it's important to experience aesthetic shock, which sets in motion our imagination, our emotions, our feelings, and our thoughts. That's the purpose of a painting and of art in general.
Pierre Soulages
#40. A simple equation for the production of successful art work is lots of reference material plus lots of art supplies equals lots of painting happiness.
Robert Genn
#41. It all has to do with art - writing, painting, things I've done for a long time but just never had enough time to pursue. I have poetry - things that are designed for songs, but they're always poems first.
Jason Newsted
#42. I don't like to make a distinction between the writer and the painter , finally , because I do both things anyway . Everybody's dreaming and trying to put down their dreams in the way that their hand knows best . I feel as much a unity , as much comradeship , with painters as I do writers .
Clive Barker
#43. [Robert Rauschenberg, 1925-2008] helped to obscure the lines between painting and sculpture, painting and photography, photography and printmaking, sculpture and photography, sculpture and dance, sculpture and technology, technology and performance art - not to mention between art and life.
Michael Kimmelman
#44. I have never understood, for instance, why some people see contemporary art as divided between 'painting' and 'conceptual art', as though this represented a genuine division.
Michael Craig-Martin
#45. When it comes to partnership, some humans can make their lives alone - it's possible. But creatively, it's more like painting: you can't just use the same colours in every painting. It's just not an option. You can't take the same photograph every time and live with art forms with no differences.
Ben Harper
#46. ...love is as much an art as painting or living; it requires practice, finesse, determination, humility, energy and delicacy.
Hannah Mary Rothschild
#47. The new painting has broken down every distinction between art and life.
Harold Rosenberg
#48. A lot of ideas don't translate very well into art. To say, "Oh my god, the grass is green ... " You're going to end up with a big green painting.
John Baldessari
#49. Therapy is to make one happy. What is the point of that? Happy people are not interesting. Better to accept the burden of unhappiness and try to turn it into something worthwhile, poetry or music or painting: that is what he been believes.
J.M. Coetzee
#50. As a composer and as a musician I'm a true believer - and this is not to be overly diplomatic - I'm a believer that there's artistry in everything from a lawn gnome to a desk chair to a symphony to an Andy Warhol painting. There's art in absolutely everything.
Darren Criss
#51. I'm trying to get every man involved in art, into experimental music, or painting, or novel-writing.
Harvey Pekar
#52. I think of my peace paintings as one long poem, with each painting being a single stanza.
Robert Indiana
#53. Religion is like an art gallery. One painting will speak to you more than another, and there's no need to explain or defend your taste.
Michael Muhammad Knight
#54. For me, acting is about the art of it and it's about being on a film set and doing your thing, painting a blank canvas.
Shailene Woodley
#55. Painting is seen as picture making, the making of an art object, something that can stand on its own.
Peter Wright
#57. And since geometry is the right foundation of all painting, I have decided to teach its rudiments and principles to all youngsters eager for art.
Albrecht Durer
#58. I am doing what I want to do - painting pictures people want and understand. I have no burning ambition to create the kind of 'art' which the confused critics praise for its 'plastic significance,' 'fluid lines,' and 'inner awareness,' or 'must be understood on three levels.
Arnold Friberg
#59. A man that has a taste of music, painting, or architecture, is like one that has another sense, when compared with such as have no relish of those arts
Joseph Addison
#60. The drama embraces and applies all the beauties and decorations of poetry. The sister arts attend and adorn it. Painting, architecture, and music are her handmaids. The costliest lights of a people's intellect burn at her show. All ages welcome her.
Robert Aris Willmott
#61. I don't think of myself as making art. I do what I do because I want to, because painting is the best way I've found to get along with myself.
Robert Rauschenberg
#62. Art like that doesn't need words. That painting tells you something by pulling you into it and pushing you out and you know what it's saying without words being spoken.
Cath Crowley
#63. Painting, art in general, enchants me. It is my life. What else matters? When you put all your soul into a work, all that is noble in you, you cannot fail to find a kindred soul who understands you, and you do not need a host of such spirits. Is not that all an artist should wish for?
Camille Pissarro
#64. All artists are mothers. To be an artist is to be a creator, whether of a symphony or a supper or a painting or a person. Motherhood is the primary art, the art of creating (procreating) people.
Peter Kreeft
#65. In my world, history comes down to language and art. No one cares much about what battles were fought, who won them and who lost them - unless there is a painting, a play, a song or a poem that speaks of the event.
Theodore Bikel
#66. All art, be it writing, painting, film, dance, whatever, is a manipulation of time and space. It's an interpretation and a recreation of the facts, using various artifacts that point us in the direction of our personal truths.
Elisa Lorello
#67. In painting I try to make some logic out of the world that has been given to me in chaos. I have a very pretentious idea that I want to make life, I want to make sense out of it. The fact that I am doomed to failure - that doesn't deter me in the least.
Grace Hartigan
#68. I sometimes set myself thinking and imagining that I find amongst men but one single art or science, and that is drawing or painting, all others being members proceeding therefrom.
Michelangelo
#69. What lives in art and is eternally living, is first of all the painter and then the painting.
Vincent Van Gogh
#70. I had always planned to make a large painting of the early spring, when the first leaves are at the bottom of the trees, and they seem to float in space in a wonderful way. But the arrival of spring can't be done in one picture.
David Hockney
#71. Only the four corners of the background remained. It was terribly difficult to fix my eyes on all of them at the same time. My experience was that the most difficult thing of all in art is painting in all four corners at the same time.
Arnulf Rainer
#72. An artist who painted a face was now 'playing with the idea of portraiture,' or 'exploring push-pull aesthetics,' or toying with contradictions like 'menacing-slash-playful,' but he or she was never, ever, just painting a face.
Steve Martin
#74. I am never in a hurry to reach details. First and above all I am interested in the large masses and the general character of a picture; when these are well established, then I try for subtleties of form and color. I rework the painting constantly and freely, and without any systematic method.
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
#75. A painting is a universal language which everyone can read, understand, and interpret in his own way through the power of imagination.
Debasish Mridha
#76. An artist's job is to inspire, from the Latin inspirare: to breathe into. The primary function of art is to inspire new thought shaped by emotions using the creative mediums we master - be it painting, music, design, craft, or photography.
Anonymous
#77. Letter from Van Gogh to Gauguin: Ah! my dear friend, to make of painting what the music of Berlioz and Wagner has been before us ... a consolatory art for distressed hearts! There are as yet only a few who feel it as you and I do!!! [Letter 739, Arles, 21 January 1889]
Liesbeth Heenk
#78. The paint for the grey paintings was mixed beforehand and then applied with different implements - sometimes a roller, sometimes a brush. It was only after painting them that I sometimes felt that the grey was not yet satisfactory and that another layer of paint was needed.
Gerhard Richter
#80. On the opposite wall was a Damien Hirst spot painting, bought by Arabella after a decent bonus season. Roger's considered view of the painting, looking at it from aesthetic, art-historical, interior-design, and psychological points of view, was that it had cost forty-seven thousand pounds, plus VAT.
John Lanchester
#81. I enjoyed art in school. I've always done little drawings and stuff like that. I don't really know what I'm doing with the painting, but I experiment.
Alex Lifeson
#82. The most joyous painting is not done for the art world, it is done for the inner world.
Michael Leunig
#83. Painting is the grandchild of nature. It is related to God.
Rembrandt
#84. Like the sundial, my paint box counts no hours but sunny ones.
Arthur Rackham
#85. It was never my goal to capitalize on punk. I could never make it as a commercial artist. I didn't back then and I still don't have the temperament and don't care for drawing or painting or making art for any other purposes other my own.
Raymond Pettibon
#87. People think you can get out your canvas and paint any time you have a free moment. You can't. Commercial art and painting are entirely different. Painting takes a different mental approach. You have to get the right attitude, the right mood.
Pierre Alechinsky
#88. Nothing in the whole world is of interest to me but my painting and my flowers.
Claude Monet
#90. The subtle hues of gold and yellow and the fresh greens and the pepper red seemed to spiral into a kaleidoscope of shapes and forms that made the tips of a person's toes tingle, so that some were inclined to remove their shoes in its presence.
Jeffry R. Halverson
#91. Painting is so poetic, while sculpture is more logical and scientific and makes you worry about gravity.
Damien Hirst
#92. Age in itself gives substance - what has lasted becomes a thing worth keeping. An older poem's increasing strangeness of language is part of its beauty, in the same way that the cracks and darkening of an old painting become part of its luminosity in the viewer's mind.
Jane Hirshfield
#93. What seems most significant to me about our movement [Impressionism] is that we have freed painting from the importance of the subject. I am at liberty to paint flowers and call them flowers, without their needing to tell a story.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
#94. These days, newish art can be priced between $10,000 and $25,000. When I tell artists that a new painting by a newish artist should go for around $1,200, they look at me like I'm a flesh-eating virus.
Jerry Saltz
#95. My studio is arranged so that I have a comfortable seating area for meeting with clients, an office area beyond that and a painting area, which includes room for art students to sit and watch as I work.
Doug Dawson
#96. Painting completed my life. I lost three children and a series of other things that would have fulfilled my horrible life. My painting took the place of all this. I think work is the best. (Frida Kahlo, p. 157)
Martha Zamora
#97. I love crafting. Knitting, decoupage, scrapbooking, any "lady-ish" art form, I'm a fan. For about six months each. Then I shove all the supplies in a closet, alongside the skeletons of long dead New Year's resolutions, like saber fencing, playing the ukulele, and Japanese brush painting.
Felicia Day
#98. My mother was the most creative, fantastic person and would come up with great things for us to do. She'd buy art supplies and all of us would sit around painting. I was lucky.
Cher
#100. Writing is a unique art-form. You are painting a detailed image in someone's mind, and it will be different for every single reader.
Giuseppe Bianco
