Wisdom from the world's greatest painters — famous artist quotes on colour, light, creativity and the daily practice of painting. A little inspiration for your next session at the easel.
500 quotes
“Nature is usually wrong.”
“An artist is not paid for his labour but for his vision.”
“To say to the painter that Nature is to be taken as she is, is to say to the player that he may sit on the piano.”
“It takes a long time for a man to look like his portrait.”
“The vast majority of English folk cannot and will not consider a picture as a picture, apart from any story which it may be supposed to tell.”
“I don’t think about art while I work…I try to think about life.”
“Like an ape? A primate?...You said it, you said it.”
“I’m just an autodidact who would like to be part of the family of artists.”
“…I don't think it's good to be honest in interviews, I think it's better to lie.”
“I want to be a painter of modern life, and modern bodies.”
“The flesh I paint is not polite. It's real, and it moves.”
“One must learn to see the beauty in ordinary things before one can paint it.”
“Painting is a science, and should be pursued as an inquiry into the laws of nature.”
“When I sit down to make a sketch from nature, the first thing I try to do is to forget that I have ever seen a picture.”
“I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of an object be what it may — light, shade, and perspective will always make it beautiful.”
“The sound of water escaping from mill dams, willows, old rotten planks, slimy posts, and brickwork — I love such things.”
“There is no such thing as an ugly colour.”
“Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend.”
“A portrait is a painting with something wrong with the mouth.”
“You can't do sketches enough. Sketch everything and keep your curiosity fresh.”
“Colour is an inborn gift, but appreciation of value is merely training of the eye, which everyone ought to be able to acquire.”
“The thicker you paint, the more colour flows.”
“To draw is to learn to see.”
“The skills of drawing and painting are learnable, and learning them changes the way you see the world.”
“Art is about changing what we see in our everyday lives and representing it in such a way that it gives us hope.”
“Painting is about the world that we live in. Black men live in the world. My choice is to include them.”
“Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.”
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
“The painter has the universe in his mind and hands.”
“A painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light.”
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