Art Quotes

“Great art picks up where nature ends.”

“Colour is all. When colour is right, form is right.”

“A painting is not a picture of an experience; it is an experience.”

“I'm not interested in the relationship of colour or form or anything else. I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions.”

“The fact that people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I can communicate those basic human emotions.”

“A picture lives by companionship, expanding and quickening in the eyes of the sensitive observer.”

“I am still learning.”

“The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.”

“If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful at all.”

“Genius is eternal patience.”

“A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.”

“The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.”

“The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short, but in setting our aim too low and achieving our mark.”

“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”

“Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.”

“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”

“I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.”

“It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.”

“Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.”

“Painting is a blind man's profession. He paints not what he sees, but what he feels.”

“Colours, like features, follow the changes of the emotions.”

“With an apple I will astonish Paris.”

“Painting from nature is not copying the object; it is realizing one's sensations.”

“The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution.”

“Treat nature by means of the cylinder, the sphere, the cone.”

“Colour is the place where our brain and the universe meet.”

“I could paint for a hundred years, a thousand years without stopping and I would still feel as though I knew nothing.”

“Colour! What a deep and mysterious language, the language of dreams.”

“I shut my eyes in order to see.”

“Art is either plagiarism or revolution.”