Painter Quotes
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The quality of a painter depends on the amount of past he carries with him.
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The eye is complicated. It mixes the colors it sees for you ... The painter must unmix them and lay them on again shade by shade, and then the eye of the beholder takes over and mixes them again.
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One should be a painter. As a writer, I feel the beauty, which is almost entirely colour, very subtle, very changeable, running over my pen, as if you poured a large jug of champagne over a hairpin.
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How are we going to make painters by lecturing to them? We are going to make questioners, doubters, and talkers. We are going to make painters by painting ourselves, and by showing the paintings of others. By working frankly from our convictions, we are going to make them work frankly from theirs.
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The painter goes through states of fullness and evaluation. That is the whole secret of art.
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A painter paints to unload himself of feelings and visions.
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I have seen no men in life loving their profession so much as painters, except, perhaps, actors, who, when not engaged themselves, always go to the play.
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Good art theory must smell of the studio, although its language should differ from the household talk of painters and sculptors.
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The painter’s instrument is his armchair.
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A painter paints, a musician plays, a writer writes - but a movie actor waits.
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I was a very hard-edged geometric painter, strongly influenced by Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg and that sort of thing.
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I'm reading a book about Romaine Brooks, a wonderful painter from early in the last century.
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I wanted to find a cave and hang out there for the rest of my life and be a cave painter and eat dirt.
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At one point Trudeau mentioned to me that the National Gallery wanted to buy a masterpiece by the great Italian painter Lotto, and it needed a million dollars from the Treasury Board. "Is that Lotto-Quebec or Lotto-Canada?" I joked, but I got the message, and the National Gallery got the painting.
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It's no easy matter to paint a background. I venture to say that the old painters had more difficulty with their grounds than with their figures. You know the story of Vandyke brought to Rubens with this recommendation: 'He already knows how to paint a background.' 'That is more than I can do!' was the reply.
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The true painter must be able, with the most usual things, to have the most unusual ideas.
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Every so often, a painter has to destroy painting. Cezanne did it, Picasso did it with Cubism. Then Pollock did it. He busted our idea of a picture all to hell. Then there could be new paintings again.
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If I stretch my arms and wonder where my fingers are - that is all the space I need as a painter.
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Many Japanese painters and calligraphers would change their names intentionally to keep their relationship to the art always fresh. This way, others' expectations can be avoided.
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Try to walk as much as you can, and keep your love for nature, for that is the true way to learn to understand art more and more. Painters understand nature and love her and teach us to see her. If one really loves nature, one can find beauty everywhere.
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Just slap anything on when you see a blank canvas staring you in the face like some imbecile. You don't know how paralyzing that is, that stare of a blank canvas is, which says to the painter, ‘You can't do a thing’. The canvas has an idiotic stare and mesmerizes some painters so much that they turn into idiots themselves. Many painters are afraid in front of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas is afraid of the real, passionate painter who dares and who has broken the spell of `you can't' once and for all.
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And painted portraits have a life of their own that comes from deep in the soul of the painter and where the machine can't go.
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Picasso is a painter, so am I; Picasso is Spanish, so am I; Picasso is a communist, neither am I.
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I have been criticized rather strenuously by painters and sculptors for not incorporating their work in our buildings.
