Most famous 100 Painting Quotes
The most popular 100 painting quotes and the celebrities who said them. Enhance your social media art posts adding these beautiful mottos in their descriptions. Here you will find painting quotes from Edgar Degas, Oscar Wilde, Frida Khalo, Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso and more.
1. “Painting is easy when you don’t know how, but very difficult when you do”
Edgar Degas
2. “The principles of true art is not to portray, but to evoke.”
Jerzy Kosinski
3. “A picture is a poem without words.”
Horace
4. “We don’t make mistakes, just happy little accidents.”
Bob Ross
6. “Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.”
Thomas Merton
7. “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”
Pablo Picasso
8. “Creativity takes courage.”
Henri Matisse
9. “Every artist was first an amateur”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
10. “I dream my painting and I paint my dream.”
Vincent Willem van Gogh
11. “You might as well ask an artist to explain his art, or ask a poet to explain his poem. It defeats the purpose. The meaning is only clear through the search.”
Rick Riordan
12. “Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.”
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
13. “I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.”
The Painted Veil
14. I don’t paint dreams or nightmares, I paint my own reality.
15. “If you hear a voice within you say you cannot paint, then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.”
Vincent Willem van Gogh
16. “Painting is the silence of thought and the music of sight.”
Orhan Pamuk, My Name Is Red
17. “Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.”
Pablo Picasso
18. “If you could say it in words, there would be no reason to paint.”
Edward Hopper
19. “The only time I feel alive is when I’m painting.”
Vincent Willem van Gogh
20. “Writing, painting, singing- it cannot stop everything. Cannot halt death in its tracks. But perhaps it can make the pause between death’s footsteps sound and look and feel beautiful, can make the space of waiting a place where you can linger without as much fear. For we are all walking each other to our deaths, and the journey there between footsteps makes up our lives.”
Ally Condie, Reached
21. “Every now and then one paints a picture that seems to have opened a door and serves as a stepping stone to other things.”
Pablo Picasso
22. “A fine work of art – music, dance, painting, story – has the power to silence the chatter in the mind and lift us to another place.”
Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting
23. “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.”
Wall and Piece
24. “I paint the spirit and soul of what I see.”
Brian Froud
25. “The secret to so many artists living so long is that every painting is a new adventure. So, you see, they’re always looking ahead to something new and exciting. The secret is not to look back.”
Norman Rockwell
26. “All real works of art look as though they were done in joy.”
Robert Henri
27. “The painter will produce pictures of little merit if he takes the works of others as his standard”
Leonardo da Vinci
28. “I wanted to paint a picture some day that people would stand before and forget that it was made of paint. I wanted it to creep into them like a bar of music and mushroom there like a soft bullet.”
O. Henry
29. “Such is my relationship with God: on my gigantic canvass of life, I am the one throwing all of the brightly-colored paints, creating genuine splatters, authentic whirlpools of color, beautiful patterns, wonderful streaks and stains and wild accents; God is the one with the paintbrush who stands beside my canvass filling all the intricate and amazing details in between the whirlpools and the streaks! We’re happy together!”
C. JoyBell C.
30. “There is something beautiful about a blank canvas, the nothingness of the beginning that is so simple and breathtakingly pure. It’s the paint that changes its meaning and the hand that creates the story. Every piece begins the same, but in the end they are all uniquely different.”
Piper Payne
31. “Without atmosphere a painting is nothing.”
Rembrandt Harmenszoon Van Rijn
32. “A painting requires a little mystery, some vagueness, and some fantasy. When you always make your meaning perfectly plain you end up boring people”
Edgar Degas
33. “When you want to make the main color pure and bright, don’t just keep adding bright colors on it. Just make the colors around the spot darker and dull. It will give the scene dramatical effects.
I think the life is the same.”
Hiroko Sakai
34. “I love to draw—pencil, ink pen—I love art. When I go on tour and visit museums in Holland, Germany or England—you know those huge paintings?—I’m just amazed. You don’t think a painter could do something like that. I can look at a piece of sculpture or a painting and totally lose myself in it.”
Michael Jackson
35. “Moonlight is sculpture; sunlight is painting”
Nathaniel Hawthorne
36. “There is something particularly fascinating about seeing places you know in a piece of art – be that in a film, or a photograph, or a painting.”
Sara Sheridan
37. “To talk about paintings is not only difficult but perhaps pointless too. You can only express in words what words are capable of expressing– what language can communicate. Painting has nothing to do with that.”
38. “You have to work with the paint and work with whatever the day brings you. If it’s a wee bit dreary out, you paint it. But paint it so it makes you glad to be inside near a cozy fire.”
Kieran Kramer
39. “Life is like canvas and when you die you have to sign the bottom corner. Will you be happy with what the painting looks like?”
Lizabeth Zindel
40. “The painting has a life of its own”
Jackson Pollock
41. “You see, for me, a painting is a dramatic action in the course of which the reality finds itself split apart. For me, that dramatic action takes precedence over all other considerations. The pure plastic act is only secondary as far as I’m concerned. What counts is the drama of that plastic art, the moment at which the universe comes out of itself and meets its own destruction.”
Francoise Gilot, Life with Picasso
42. “Do you know why we have the sunflowers? It’s not because Vincent van Gogh suffered. It’s because Vincent van Gogh had a brother who loved him. Through all the pain, he had a tether, a connection to the world. And that is the focus of the story we need – connection.”
Hannah Gadsby
43. “Like a painting; you are art and I hope I can be a piece of it.”
Giovannie de Sadeleer
44. “To me, a painter, if not the most useful, is the least harmful member of our society.”
Man Ray
45. “An artist who works with his hands, his head and his heart at the same time creates a masterpiece.”
Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words
46. “I paint what I see and not what others like to see.”
Édouard Manet
47. “I discovered is that I’m an image maker, and I don’t care how its made—whether it’s through painting or photography or drawing—I just want to create images.”
James Stanford
48. “Sometimes, life becomes a painting all by itself.”
Anthony T. Hincks
49. “A painter of genius has a bovine mind. He does not think, he only sees.”
Jean-Michel Rene Souche
50. “Loan me a canvas and I will let down my guard. Loan me a paintbrush and I will reach into my soul. Loan me jars full of colors and I will submerge in a sea of possibilities. Loan me the time and you will see infinite versions of my being re-born.”
Efrat Cybulkiewicz
51. “There is nothing more prestigious than a beautiful soul painting the world with his or her vibrant colors”
Ms. Bonnie Zackson Koury
52. “Usually, a “great painter” is a dead painter.”
Jean-Michel Rene Souche, Along Odessa Beaches: Oil Paintings
53. “An artist needs to be free in imagination and disciplined in execution.”
Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words
54. “Art is a visual language; I’m just perfecting my alphabet.”
Zachary A. Diaz
55. “One of the most beautiful things to do is to paint darkness, which nevertheless has light in it.”
Van Gogh, Cartas a Theo
56. “Painting is mute poetry, and poetry is blind painting”
Leonardo da Vinci, Thoughts on Art and Life
57. “If you construct a room in paint, you haunt it. Your life rests in every stroke. So paint only the rooms that you can bear to occupy forever. Or paint the stars instead.”
Benjamin Wood, The Ecliptic
58. “A painting is a universal language which everyone can read, understand, and interpret in his own way through the power of imagination.”
Debasish Mridha
59. “Art is a distinct form of human communication. Art interprets experience, sensation, and feelings. An artistic work translates our mental images and allows other people to understand what we feel; art conveys our happiness, sadness, hopes, doubts, anxieties, fears, desires, and ineffable longings.”
Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls
60. “You can’t color your world with someone’s paint.”
101 Keys To Everyday Passion
61. “In time, all great masterpieces turn into shameless creatures who laugh at their creators.”
Erol Ozan
62. “We are all artists painting our desires on the canvas of life and time.”
Steven Redhead, Unleash The Power of Your Heart and Mind
63. “Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is.”
Jackson Pollock
64. “Painting is an illusion, a piece of magic, so what you see is not what you see.”
Philip Guston
65. “Painting is concerned with all the 10 attributes of sight; which are: Darkness, Light, Solidity and Colour, Form and Position, Distance and Propinquity, Motion and Rest. “
Leonardo da Vinci
66. “Good painting is like good cooking; it can be tasted, but not explained. ”
Maurice de Vlaminck
67. “Every painting is a voyage into a sacred harbor.”
Giotto di Bondone
68. “Painting is a nail to which I fasten my ideas.”
Georges Braque
69. “Painting from nature is not copying the object; it is realizing one’s sensations. ”
Paul Cezanne
70. “A good painting to me has always been like a friend. It keeps me company, comforts and inspires.”
Hedy Lamarr
71. “Painting is by nature a luminous language.”
Robert Delaunay
72. “Painting is a blind man’s profession. He paints not what he sees, but what he feels, what he tells himself about what he has seen. “
Pablo Picasso
73. “In painting, you must give the idea of the true by means of the false.”
Edgar Degas
74. “The point of painting is not really deception or imitation. ”
A. S. Byatt
75. “Painting is a faith, and it imposes the duty to disregard public opinion”
Vincent Van Gogh
76. “Painting is a source of endless pleasure, but also of great anguish.”
Balthus
77. “For me, painting is a way to forget life. It is a cry in the night, a strangled laugh.”
Georges Rouault
78. “One learns about painting by looking at and imitating other painters.”
Frank Stella
79. “Painting is the aesthetic side of the object but it has never been original, has never been its own goal.”
Kazimir Malevich
80. “Painting becomes interesting when it becomes timeless.”
Peter Doig
81. “Painting calmed the chaos that shook my soul.”
Niki de St. Phalle
82. “Painting does what we cannot do – it brings a three-dimensional world into a two-dimensional plane. ”
Chuck Jones
83. “Painting is the frozen evidence of a performance.”
Chuck Close
84. “Painting contains a divine force which… makes the dead seem almost alive.”
Leon Battista Alberti
86. “Painting is the passage from the chaos of the emotions to the order of the possible.”
Balthus
87. “The canvas has an idiotic stare and mesmerizes some painters so much that they turn into idiots themselves.”
Vincent Van Gogh
88. “Painting is the most beautiful of all arts. In it, all sensations are condensed; contemplating it, everyone can create a story at the will of his imagination and–with a single glance–have his soul invaded by the most profound recollections; no effort of memory, everything is summed up in one instant. A complete art which sums up all the others and completes them. Like music, it acts on the soul through the intermediary of the senses: harmonious colors correspond to the harmonies of sound. But in painting a unity is obtained which is not possible in music, where the accords follow one another, so that the judgment experiences a continuous fatigue if it wants to reunite the end with the beginning. The ear is actually a sense inferior to the eye. The hearing can only grasp a single sound at a time, whereas the sight takes in everything and simultaneously simplifies it at will.”
Paul Gauguin
89. “I’ve been doing a lot of abstract painting lately, extremely abstract. No brush, no paint, no canvas, I just think about it.”
Steven Wright
90. “Painting dissolves the forms at its command … it melts them into color.”
Alexander Eliot
91. “Life is a great big canvas, throw all the paint you can on it.”
Danny Kaye
92. “The best color to paint with is love.”
Jarod Kintz
93. “I am not sick. I am broken. But I am happy to be alive as long as I can paint.”
Frida Kahlo
94. “I don’t paint what I look at, but what looks at me.”
Françoise Gilot
95. “There are only two styles of portrait painting: the serious and the smirk.”
Charles Dickens
96. “Painting is something that takes place among the colors … one has to leave them alone completely so that they can settle the matter among themselves. Their intercourse: this is the whole of painting. Whoever meddles, arranges, injects his human deliberation, his wit, his advocacy, his intellectual agility in any way, is already disturbing and clouding their activity.”
Rainer Maria Rilke
97. “If you call painting dumb poetry, the painter may call poetry blind painting.”
Leonardo Da Vinci
98. “The painter with an original vision is always opposed by the schools. That is, at first. But when he wins out, then the schools merely take over his technique and use it as a club to put down the next creator. And so it goes.”
Horace Holley
99. “The good painter has two principal things to depict: man and the purpose of his mind. The first is easy, the second is difficult since he must do it by the gestures and movements of the limbs, and this is to be learned from the dumb, who more than all other men excel in it.”
Leonardo Da Vinci
100. “The Painter who seeks popularity in Art closes the door upon his own genius.”
Washington Allston
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