Top 90 Painters Quotes

I have been criticized rather strenuously by painters and sculptors for not incorporating their work in our buildings.

But I was in awe of the painters; I mean I was new in New York, and I thought the painting that was going on here was just unbelievable.

I’m not saying I’m the best. There are many painters in the world. But there is only one Picasso.

The Berlin of the ’20s formed the foundation of my future education… the Berlin of the UFA studios, of Fritz Lang, Lubitsch and Erich Pommer. The Berlin of the architects Gropius, Mendelsohn and Mies van der Rohe. The Berlin of the painters Max Libermann, Grosz, Otto Dix, Klee and Kandinsky.

Red House Painters were doing cover songs before our first record deal. I remember live shows where we did an AC/DC song; I think we did ‘Send In The Clowns’ by Judy Collins. We did ‘The Star Spangled Banner,’ which came out on our third record.

Painters have always needed a sort of veil upon which they can focus their attention. It’s as though the more fully the consciousness is absorbed, the greater the freedom of the spirit behind.

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.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the ambition of the great painters was to make paintings that were like music, which was then considered as the noblest art.

Historically, the women who have been the great painters of the canon have very often have been the wives or daughters of supportive men. Like Artemisia, whose father was a very established painter. I will say that the two current contemporary artists I admire the most are women: Kara Walker and Swoon.

When younger writers and poets, musicians and painters are weakened by a stemming of funds, they come to me saddened, not as full of dreams and excitement and ideas. I am then weakened and diminished, and made less rich.

The earliest paintings I loved were always the most non-referential paintings you can imagine, by painters such as Mondrian. I was thrilled by them because they didn’t refer to anything else. They stood alone, and they were just charged magic objects that did not get their strength from being connected to anything else.

It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academicism.

Both my parents were painters.

I’m probably much more influenced by film-makers and painters than I am by other songwriters or poets.

Painters who do self-portraits are engaging in a form of narcissism. But it doesn’t work like that in movies. A truly narcissistic person wouldn’t go into filmmaking because it’s just too tiring.

Painters hate having to explain what their work is about. They always say, ‘It’s whatever you want it to be’ – because I think that’s their intention, to connect with each person’s subconscious, and not to try and dictate.

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.

Painters must speak through paint, not through words.

Maine likes to call itself ‘America’s Vacationland.’ For many artists, though, it’s the office. Since the 19th century, painters from all over the country – including Edward Hopper, Alex Katz, John Marin, Fairfield Porter, Neil Welliver and Andrew Wyeth – have spent large chunks of time there.

Few of the early houses in New England were painted, or colored, as it was called, either without or within. Painters do not appear in any of the early lists of workmen.

Art was a way of life in my family. My grandfather, N.C. Wyeth, who died a year before I was born, had been a prominent painter. So was my father, Andrew. My two aunts and two of my uncles also earned a living as painters.

In England, there is a dividing line between artists and illustrators, who are thought inferior to painters. Well, that’s absolute rubbish. Some of the most creative work is being done in children’s books. In Japan, everything is art. They don’t say painting is better than ceramics or dress design.

I believe that the great painters with their intellect as master have attempted to force this unwilling medium of paint and canvas into a record of their emotions.

I would love to have been a painter in the tradition of the surrealist painters who I admire so much.

I liked drawing and painting, because the only failure would be to listen to the doubters who wanted me to stop drawing and painting because ‘you aren’t going to make a living doing that.’ I liked looking in art books at the work of painters.

Painters ‘see’ the world; musicians ‘hear’ it.

Unfortunately, we are not painters and authors, where we can do something in isolation. We require a lot of money to create what we create. It’s almost like being an architect: You can’t be an architect and build whatever buildings you want to.

By the time I discovered Chicano painters in the mid-’80s, I recognized that these guys were really world-class painters, but they weren’t getting any attention, which was good in one sense in that I could get their work for cheaper!

When I’m dead, I wanna leave a body of work, like authors or great painters do.

Everyone in my family is an artist. Both my parents are painters and my mom’s an opera singer. I was never shown any other way to process life.

Painters aren’t expected to paint bleak pictures, are they?

The lovely thing about being an actor is being anonymous, it’s never having to explain yourself. And that’s what I find interesting about actors or painters I admire. I don’t want to know about their lives.

I’ve been trekking the hills and lanes of the British countryside for nearly four decades now and I’ve come to associate my passion with overexcited poets rather than pampered painters.

I took to wearing a black tie known as the Ascot, with long drooping ends. I had seen pictures of painters, sculptors, poets, wearing this style of tie.

A photographer must choose a palette as painters choose theirs.

It is this research into pure painting that is the problem at the present moment. I do not know any painters in Paris who are really searching for this ideal world.

A lot of the most prolific painters died broke and weren’t appreciated in their time. I’m trying to remember who exactly I was thinking of – like Rembrandt, van Gogh or Gauguin. Some of those guys, they got whole floors of museums to themselves but weren’t really appreciated in their time at all.

Painting is a field that attracts a lot of lazy people. You can just sort of sit and wait for things to come to you. I know a lot of painters who’ll sit and chat it up all night. But God, I just can’t do that.

I have a strange relationship with influences because mine are mostly literary or painters or poets, who I’ll even quote. I don’t do tributes to cinema.

I love painters because I don’t paint, so I get to enjoy art; I like collecting paintings.

Latin America seemed to be a land where there were only dictators, revolutionaries, catastrophes. Now we know that Latin America can produce also artists, musicians, painters, thinkers, and novelists.

Climbing has so much more culture than all other activities put together. There is no culture in tennis, just a few names, a few dates. No big culture in soccer. But we have thousands of books, great philosophers, thinkers, painters.

My earliest drawing is a supposed Carracci. It wasn’t very expensive, I guess, because they don’t know if it’s a real Carracci. But it has all these seals on it of people who’ve owned it, and one of the great portrait painters of England, Reynolds, had owned it, so that’s the earliest.

You just gotta record stuff and move on and make new material. Painters don’t wait until they’re in some specific gallery before they move on to the next painting.

I think that most people think painters are kind of ridiculous, you know?

I write about art out of gratitude to painters for the joy and spiritual uplift they have given me. Painters interpret for us the visual glories of God and, in this way, bring us closer to Him.

Usually when painters use photographs, they enlarge and copy them and simply make a large, boring painting of a large, boring photograph.

I counterfeited Mark Kostabi’s artworks. During the eighties, Mark didn’t paint his own paintings. Instead, he had other artists painting them, and he just added his signature. So what I did was to use some of the same painters, and signed his name myself.

My family is filled with amazingly talented painters, musicians, vocalists.

My love of performers is not really different than my love for painters. Everyone’s really high-strung and trying to do the best they can.

The men resent a woman getting any honour in what they consider is essentially their field. Men painters mostly despise women painters. So I have decided to stop squirming, to throw any honour in with Canada and women.