Quotes on painting.

I have come across so many quotes in my readings about painters and paintings.  I share some of them here. Reading about the lives and practices of artists is a great way to learn what painting is all about.  

“We insist on the idea that the visible is a manifestation of the invisible, that forms and colors are indications of the state of your soul.” Maurice Denis.

”For Turner we are not the ‘lords of creation.’  For from it.  Instead, we are merely insignificant specks of matter in an often hostile and always indifferent universe.  We may try to overcome the forces of external nature, but such attempts are both cosmic and comic self-delusion.  To point up  this ‘fallacy of hope’ Turner constantly made us look as imperfect, gauche, crude, child-like, or even doll-like as possible.”  Turner, by Eric Shanes, Page 78.

Pissaro’s advice to a young painter.

 “Look for the kind of nature that suits your temperament.  The motif should be observed more for shape and color than for drawing.  There is no need to tighten the form which can be obtained without that.  Precise drawing is dry and hampers the impression of the whole;  it destroys all sensation.

Do not define too closely the outlines of things;  it is the brush stroke of the right value and color which should produce the drawing.  In a mass, the greatest difficulty is not to give the contour in detail, but to paint what is within.  Paint the essential character of things, try to convey it by any means whatsoever, without bothering about technique.

When painting, make a choice of subject, see what is lying to the right and the left, then work everything simultaneously. Don’t work bit by bit, but paint everything at once by placing tones everywhere, with brush strokes of the right color and value, while noticing what is alongside.  Use small brush strokes and try to put down your perceptions immediately.  

The eye should not be fixed on one point, but should take in everything, while observing the reflections which the colors produce on their surroundings.  Work at the same time upon the sky, water, branches, ground, keeping everything going on an equal basis and unceasingly rework until you have got it.  Do not proceed according to rules and principles, but paint what you observe and feel.”  Camille Pissarro.

”Renoir began by putting incomprehensible little touches on the white background. Without even a suggestion of form.” Notes of B. Schmalmann, University of South .africa.

”It is more important to give the sentiment of the thing than to give the fact of it.”  Daniel Pankhurst , from The Painter in Oil.

”Silently glowing over a landscape is a rainbow.  You must learn to see it.  It is always there.”  Milne.

“A painting is a visible idea expressed in terms of color, form, and line.  It is the product of perception, plus feeling, plus intent, plus knowledge, plus temperament, plus pigment.  And as all these are differently proportional in all persons, it is only a matter of being natural on the part of the painter that the painting should be original. “ Danial Burliegh Pankhurst.

”Some people insist upon the restriction of the painter’s work to the reproduction of what he sees.  Those who remain within these narrow limits commit themselves to an inferior goal.  The old masters have proved that the artist, once he has established his own idiom, once he has taken from nature the necessary means of expression, is free, legitimately free, to borrow his subjects from history, from the poets, from his own imagination...... while I recognize the necessity for a basis of observed reality . . . true art lies in a reality that is felt”  Odilon Redon.

”I believe that in time you will come to realize that in the studios one not only does not learn much about painting, but one does not even learn much about a technique of life; so one is obliged to learn how to live, as well as how to paint, without having recourse to the old tricks and optical illusions of the clever ones. “. Vincent Van Gogh.