Controversy is a last resort for the talentless.

I think that the fact that it’s black and that it has like this color in it and there’s painting around it. It just doesn’t seem real, and then the fact that it’s functional too.

As an artist I have always tried to be faithful to my vision of life, and I have frequently been in conflict with those who wanted me to paint not what I saw but what...

Painting and writing are solitary arts.

Who are you, Martin Eden? he demanded of himself in the looking- glass, that night when he got back to his room. He gazed at himself long and curiously. Who are you? What are you?...

This painting was created by someone who spent endless hours observing their subject and applying precise strokes of paint in patterns to replicate what their mind said was the essence of the person who stood...

After this series, he really stopped painting.

I who have been involved with all styles of painting can assure you that the only things that fluctuate are the waves of fashion which carry the snobs and speculators; the number of true connoisseurs...

Pollock also… wanted one to be wrapped in the painting.

With cold eyes and indifferent mind the spectators regard the work. Connoissers admire the “skill” (as one admires a tightrope walker), enjoy the “quality of painting” (as one enjoys a pasty). But hungry souls go...

I don’t like getting out when I could be painting. And when I’m painting, I don’t want anybody else around.

If you could say it in words, there would be no reason to paint.

A picture was a motionless record of motion. An arrested representation of life. A picture was the kiss of death pretending to possess immutability.

Now you are walking in Paris all alone in the crowdAs herds of bellowing buses drive byLove’s anguish tightens your throatAs if you were never to be loved againIf you lived in the old days...

I’d stumbled upon the inner sanctuary of a woman who loved the world. Loved the faces of people she saw. Loved the way a hand looked when it was relaxed. Loved the way a woman...

Negative people will always be there to stain your pure image with their dirty tongues and brushes, but you’ll always remain as white as snow, no matter how high the quality of paint they use.

Planned Parenthood offends religious people with its key chain that shows a portion of the famous painting from the Sistine Chapel. Michelangelo gave us a beautiful image of Adam stretching out his hand to God,...

See how the sacred old flamingoes come,Painting with shadow all the marble steps:Aged and wise, they seek their wonted perchesWithin the temple, devious walking, madeTo wander by their melancholy minds.

I am trying like Klee, to create something that will have a life of its own, that can put me in real danger, a danger which I willingly take on myself.

When you painted on earth – at least in your earlier days – it was because you caught glimpses of heaven in the earthly landscape. The success of your painting was that it enabled others...

I spray the sky fast. Eyes ahead and behind. Looking for cops. Looking for anyone I don’t want to be here. Paint sails and the things that kick in my head scream from can to...

Even though artists of all kinds claim to put their hearts and souls into their works, it will only confuse you, for example, if you try to discern a painter by his paintings. His masterpiece...

Your impression of me is different than my impression of me. But that’s OK, because your impression is impressionistic, like a Monet painting, while mine is realistic, like a Rembrandt.

That little guy, said Boris in the car on the way to Antwerp. You know the painter saw him-he wasn’t painting that bird from his mind, you know? That’s a real little guy, chained up...

Unlike a painting or a drawing, a print can be in multiple impressions.

Painting is the silence of thought and the music of sight.

Little deer, I’ve stuffed all the world’s diseases inside you. / Your veins are thorns // and the good cells are lost in the deep dark woods / of your organs.

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...

In her book The Writing Life (1989), Annie Dillard tells the story of a fellow writer who was asked by a student, “Do you think I could be a writer?” “‘Well,’ the writer said, ‘do...

I love film – it’s like painting.

‘Paint only what you see,’ his hero Millet had admonished.’Imagination is a burden to a painter,’ Auguste Renoir had told him. ‘Painters are craftsmen, not storytellers. Paint what you see.’Ah, but what they hadn’t said,...

Make yourself interesting to history. Master some aspect of life, and then find a different area and do something crazy. Become a painter, then round up a herd of cattle and slaughter them with your...

Curioso como a mãe do Gil, sem saber ler nem escrever, compreendera que Gil tinha de pintar, absolutamente de pintar, nem que para isso ela tivesse de se sacrificar, de se estafar, de morrer. Intuição...

I say that good painters imitated nature; but that bad ones vomited it.

I had completely forgotten about the painting,

One does a whole painting for one peach and people think just the opposite — that particular peach is but a detail.

I’m not so facile that I can accomplish or find out what I want to know or explore enough of the possibilities and a way of making a painting, say, in just one painting or...

And now as if the cleaning and the scrubbing and the scything and the mowing had drowned it there rose that half-heard melody, that intermittent music which the ear half catches but lets fall; a...

Painting something that defies the law of the land is good. Painting something that defies the law of the land and the law of gravity at the same time is ideal.

The Dutch customs once thought my pictures were photos. Where on earth did they think I could have photographed my subjects? In Hell, perhaps?

I painted my walls yellow, with melted butter, because I recently discovered that I had a popcorn ceiling. It’s this kind of reasoning that leads me to think I might make a great politician. Vote...

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.

Look at this one.” I picked up a small painting of a man with dark hair and a short, dark beard. He wore a loose shirt, cobalt blue, unbuttoned at the top, showing a prominent,...

We must have design in a picture even at the expense of truth. You are using nature for your artistic needs.

It was strange walking through the empty apartment. My battered purple room was gone, Brittany’s bruised blue was gone. Two coats covered everything. It was like none of it had ever happened.

I had a dream about you painting the scene of a house fire. The clocks were melting and Salvador Dali was riding around in a clown car muttering something about irony.

Literature is painting, architecture, and music.

I paint the spirit and soul of what I see.

Glezniecība ir tik sasodīti grūta lieta, ka pietiek ko nomocīties jau ar krāsām, eļļu un terpentīnu un tāpēc modeļi sen patriekti no darbnīcām, lai nemaisās pa kājām! Modeļi nenozīmē neko citu kā vien kafijas plencēšanu,...

The most mesmerizing of artists is always like one who was merely drawing in the sand and people came to watch.