Top 100 My Painting Quotes
#1. I grew up loving horses. I was relatively obsessed, starting with my rocking horse at age 2, all the way through my painting and drawing phase.
Diane Lane
#2. No one wants my painting because it is different from other people's peculiar, crazy public that demands the greatest possible degree of originality on the painter's part and yet won't accept him unless his work resembles that of the others!
Paul Gauguin
#3. My painting occurs when I think of two disparate elements.
Alex Colville
#4. I was the first woman to paint cleanly, and that was the basis of my success. From a hundred pictures, mine will always stand out. And so the galleries began to hang my work in their best rooms, always in the middle, because my painting was attractive. It was precise. It was 'finished'.
Tamara De Lempicka
#5. People say, 'Why don't you just paint with paintbrushes?' I say that I feel more connected to my painting using my skin. It's very tribal in a way - savage!
Meredith Ostrom
#6. My painting carries with it the message of pain.
Frida Kahlo
#7. I hope that my painting has the impact of giving someone, as it did me, the feeling of his own totality, of his own separateness, of his own individuality.
Barnett Newman
#8. As soon as I put my foot on Indian soil, my painting underwent a change not only in subject and spirit but in technique.
Amrita Sher-Gil
#9. Usually I draw in relation to my painting, what I am working on at the time. On a lucky day a surprising balance of forms and spaces will appear ... making itself, the image taking hold. This in turn moves me toward painting - anxious to get to the same place, with the actuality of paint and light.
Philip Guston
#10. When I work, I'm thinking in terms of purely visual effects and relations, and any verbal equivalent is something that comes afterwards. But it's inconceivable to me that I could experience things and not have them enter into my painting.
Adolph Gottlieb
#11. Nothing in the whole world is of interest to me but my painting and my flowers.
Claude Monet
#12. Most of my painting is done sitting in a chair with a book. I'd say it's 80 per cent sitting and reading, 10 per cent eating and ten per cent painting.
Susan Rothenberg
#13. 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
#14. All of my knowledge, of both science and religion, I incorporate into the classical tradition of my painting.
Salvador Dali
#15. As for the subject matter in my painting ... it is very often an incidental thing in the background, elusive and unclear, that really stirred me.
William Baziotes
#16. The Landscape becomes reflective, human and thinks itself though me. I make it an
object, let it project itself and endure within my painting....I become the subjective
consciousness of the landscape, and my painting becomes its objective consciousness.
Cezanne
#17. My painting is visible images that conceal nothing ... they evoke mystery. Mystery means nothing. It is unknowable.
Rene Magritte
#18. Sometimes, dear brother, I know so well what I want. I am quite able to do without God, both in my life and in my painting, but what I cannot do without, unwell as I am, is something greater than myself, which is my life, the power to create.
Vincent Van Gogh
#19. I am a communist and my painting is a communist painting. But if I were a shoemaker, Royalist or Communist or anything else, I would not necessarily hammer my shoes in any special way to show my politics.
Pablo Picasso
#21. Cinema informed my painting by the sheer geography - on locations, there is so much downtime. And when you're spending all this time creating art by committee, the concept of the singular voice is a pleasant antidote.
Billy Zane
#22. My painting is visible images which conceal nothing ... they evoke mystery and indeed when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question 'What does that mean'? It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing either, it is unknowable.
Rene Magritte
#23. For me there is no gap between my painting and my so-called 'decorative' work. I never considered the 'minor arts' to be artistically frustrating; on the contrary, it was an extension of my art.
Sonia Delaunay
#24. I am a Communist and my painting is Communist painting.
Pablo Picasso
#25. I feel fairly certain that my painting skills might not be best shown on 'Dancing with the Stars.' I'll have to come up with another way to showcase that side of me.
Derek Hough
#27. When I judge art, I take my painting and put it next to a God made object like a tree or flower. If it clashes, it is not art.
Paul Cezanne
#28. I feel the need of attaining the maximum of intensity with the minimum of means. It is this which has led me to give my painting a character of even greater bareness.
Joan Miro
#29. People who look at my painting say that it makes them happy, like the feeling when you wake up in the morning. And happiness is the goal, isn't it?
Agnes Martin
#30. I can very well do without God both in my life and in my painting, but I cannot, suffering as I am, do without something which is greater than I, which is my life, the power to create.
Vincent Van Gogh
#31. I consider my painting finished when my eyes goes to a particular spot on the canvas. But if I put the picture away about thirty feet on the wall and the movements keep returning to me and the eye seems to be responding to something living, then it is finished.
William Baziotes
#32. I made my first trip west of the Hudson and it was a revelation. The naked musculature of the Rockies was overpowering and my painting responded.
Elaine De Kooning
#33. Rock & roll is not obscure, it's really easy to understand. So is my painting.
Grace Slick
#34. When people read erotic symbols into my painting, they're really thinking about their own affairs.
Georgia O'Keeffe
#35. My core competency has really informed my painting. The roots of editing stem from classical paintings - classic painters intended to drive your eye from this conflict to that intrigue, ending with a caprice. That is a montage, that is editing. It became a flipbook in later generations.
Billy Zane
#36. I always feel attacked when I'm asked about my painting.
Georg Baselitz
#37. I am out to introduce a psychic shock into my painting, one that is always motivated by pictorial reasoning: that is to say, a fourth dimension.
Marc Chagall
#38. I think only of my painting, and if I were to drop it, I think I'd go crazy.
Claude Monet
#39. There's nobody living who couldn't stand all afternoon in front of a waterfall ... Anyone who can sit on a stone in a field awhile can see my painting. Nature is like parting a curtain, you go into it ... as you would cross an empty beach to look at the ocean.
Agnes Martin
#40. When objects shattered into fragments appeared in my painting about 1909, this for me was a way of getting closest to the object ... Fragmentation helped me to establish space and movement in space.
Georges Braque
#41. I do not think my painting has ever been revolutionary. It was not directed against any kind of painting. I have never wanted to prove that I was right and someone else wrong ...
Georges Braque
#42. I work on all parts of my painting at once, improving it very gently until I find that the effect is complete.
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
#43. I should hate to be employed and have no time for my needlework and my painting and playing the piano and seeing people. I find I have little enough spare time as it is." "Rubbish, caro, one can find time for important things if one makes an effort." conversation between Georgie and Lucia
Tom Holt
#44. When I am in my painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing.
Jackson Pollock
#45. Long necks. The thrust of the head in a certain position. The way the fingers work, fabrics work. It's all part of my painting background.
Lillian Bassman
#46. I've explored a variety of directions and themes over the years. But I think in my painting you can see the signature of one artist, the work of one wrist.
Helen Frankenthaler
#47. I've done what I could as a painter and that seems to me to be sufficient. I don't want to be compared to the great masters of the past, and my painting is open to criticism; that's enough.
Claude Monet
#48. Just listening carefully to what the musicians are really doing, putting the music in the right time ... I became aware of the degree to which time, and therefore duration, was important in music and in art. It had a direct influence on my painting.
Guido Molinari
#49. My painting Two Worlds actually changed the way people see the world.
Robert Lyn Nelson
#50. At 16, I decided to do something brave: I went on a prehistoric dig. In fact, I've had my name in a museum since I was 18 years old, not for my painting but for the prehistoric objects I found. That's how I started thinking about art.
Pierre Soulages
#52. Realist painting has to do with leaving out a lot of detail. I think my painting can be a little shocking in all that it leaves out. But what happens is that the mind fills in what's missing ... Painting is a way of making you see what I saw.
Alex Katz
#53. The flat sound of my wooden clogs on the cobblestones, deep, hollow and powerful, is the note I seek in my painting.
Paul Gauguin
#54. I think my painting is so autobiographical if anyone can take the trouble to read it.
Lee Krasner
#55. My painting represents the victory of the forces of darkness and peace over the powers of light and evil.
Ad Reinhardt
#56. My painting is what I have to give back to the world for what the world gives to me.
Georgia O'Keeffe
#58. Technically, a makeup artist's canvas is the face and body. The difference is that my painting of makeup is integrated into the painting of the flesh and not on top of it. I think in some ways it is more difficult to expressively deploy makeup.
Richard Phillips
#59. My painting teacher in high school used to say, 'I can't paint like I want to, but through practice I'll get better.' But I don't think that's true. I think sometimes you just can't paint.
Ellie Kemper
#60. I don't want the viewer to be able to peel away the layers of my painting like the layers of an onion and find that all the blues are on the same level.
Chuck Close
#61. When I write, I disturb. When I show a film, I disturb. When I exhibit my painting, I disturb, and I disturb if I don't. I have a knack for disturbing.
Jean Cocteau
#62. What I would like in my painting is simply a spray of colour that hangs like a cloud, but does not lose its shape.
Jules Olitski
#63. I have to take it as a given that I have got a certain ability to do something. I can be an artist, which is take something and transform it into another thing. I can just see something, and I can see my painting.
Gary Hume
#64. There are times when I have started a work with an end in mind, but then, for one reason or another, as my picture unfolded, it emphatically suggested another direction ... I always accept the risk and go for it. I'm convinced that at such times my painting is wiser than I am.
Richard Schmid
#65. I did not want windows, only skylights. I chose my painting wall as it has the best morning light.
Ellsworth Kelly
#66. I see no thread running through my work; I simply get on with my life and my painting.
John Piper
#67. It took me time to understand my water lilies. I had planted them for the pleasure of it; I grew them without ever thinking of painting them.
Claude Monet
#68. It felt as if I had lived all my life inside a flat painting and only now had I stepped into the real world.
Rosamund Hodge
#69. My studio work is a central part of my life and I'd be at loose ends without it. When I'm not in my studio, I don't stop thinking about painting.
Stephen Beal
#70. The picture waits for my verdict; it is not to command me, but I am to settle its claim to praise.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#71. I do what I do out of pure enjoyment. Hopefully, nobody does it better. There's a beauty to making a great deal. It's my canvas. And I like painting it.
Donald Trump
#72. Sometimes I miss out the morning's painting session and instead study my Japanese books in the open.
Gustav Klimt
#73. 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
#74. If you give a meaning to certain things in my paintings it may be very true, but it is not my idea to give this meaning. What ideas and conclusions you have got I obtained too, but instinctively, unconsciously. I make the painting for the painting. I paint the objects for what they are.
Pablo Picasso
#75. 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
#76. I think somebody should be able to do all my paintings for me.
Andy Warhol
#77. I love painting and music, of course. I don't know nearly as much about them as I know about poetry. I've certainly been influenced by fiction. I was overwhelmed by War and Peace when I read it, and I didn't read it until I was in my late 20s.
Kenneth Koch
#78. I was the youngest of four kids, and Dad, who had a garden centre before he retired, came from a large Lancashire family. Every one of my uncles had their own business, including a post office, two fish and chip shops and a painting and decorating business.
Rick Astley
#79. I used to do stop motion in my own garage and Claymation and all that stuff. That led to doing backgrounds and matte paintings. I started doing matte paintings professionally back before the computer, sort of painting on glass.
Robert Stromberg
#80. 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
#81. 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
#82. I am going to do some drawings or paintings ... in the mirror of my wardrobe..with myself as a figure doing something.
Gwen John
#83. Painting picture by picture, I followed the impressions my eye took in at heightened moments. I painted only memories, adding nothing, no details that I did not see. Hence the simplicity of the paintings, their emptiness.
Edvard Munch
#84. I always sang. I wanted to be in a band with my sister, and I was, at 11. At 12, I started writing seriously, and that was my pacifier all through high school - that and painting.
Cyndi Lauper
#85. 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
#86. It's like they were worried that I'd be alone all day brooding and painting my cabin black or something - sheesh.
Melissa Walker
#87. I am trying with all my skill to do a painting that is all woman, as well as all of me.
Georgia O'Keeffe
#88. My work is an exploration of the self. I've always been concerned with how I'm living and how that reflects in the painting.
Jose Parla
#89. To make music I rely on other people, which is good - that's the main difference in painting and music at this stage. They are separate parts of my life really, like having two jobs, one in a bar, one in a lighthouse.
Danny Fox
#90. NEXT LIFE. My embroidery studio on the main street of Bayeux will be just one part of my Institute of Slow Information. I will also teach letter writing, listening, miniature portrait painting, and the art of doing one thing at a time.
Vivian Swift
#91. When I started working on ambient music, my idea was to make music that was more like painting.
Brian Eno
#92. My goal is to make all my paintings clear and realistic, even more understandable than a photograph.
E. J. Hughes
#93. You don't look at a painting and ask if the artist was gay or straight. I think it's irrelevant in any situation - I don't care if my garbageman is gay or straight as long as he picks up the garbage.
Bryan Batt
#94. I was very dramatic as a kid. I loved to entertain. I was taking my bathing suits and painting them black and putting sparkles on them because I thought I was going to be on stage.
Selena Gomez
#95. If my husband ever met a woman on the street who looked like one of his paintings he would faint.
Jacqueline Roque
#96. I always liked paintings to be walls rather than windows. When we see a painting on a wall, it's a window, so I often put my paintings in the middle of the space to make a wall.
Pierre Soulages
#97. At 18 I began painting steadily fulltime and at age 20 had my first New York show at the Macbeth Gallery.
Andrew Wyeth
#98. I paint for myself. I don't know how to do anything else, anyway. Also I have to earn my living, and occupy myself.
Francis Bacon
#99. My parents felt that acting was far too insecure. Don't ask me what made them think that painting would be more secure.
John Hurt
#100. My life is like a memento more painting from European art: there is always a grinning skull at my side to remind me of the folly of human ambition.
Yann Martel
