#painting

He had been a boy who liked to draw, according to my friend, so he became an architect. Children who drew,I learned, became architects; I had thought they became painters. My friend explained that it was not proper to become a painter; it couldn’t be done. I resigned myself to architecture school and a long life of drawing buildings. It was a pity, for I disliked buildings, considering them only a stiffer and more ample form of clothing, and no more important. ↗

— Annie Dillard

#drawing #painting #vocation #architecture

I lacked the knowledge of linear perspective needed to get into the art school, so now I whitewash walls and imagine I’m heaven’s landscape painter. ↗

— Bauvard

#heaven #humor #painting #art

If you hear a voice within you say „you cannot paint“, then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced. ↗

— Vincent Van Gogh

#self-doubt #doubt

I've been actively engaged with mythic imagery ever since I picked up that Rackham book, but it really came into focus for me when I moved from London to the country. As I walked the extraordinary landscape of Dartmoor, I looked at the trees and the rocks and the hills and I could see the personality in those forms...then they metamorphosed under my pencil into faeries, goblins and trolls. After Alan and I published "Faeries", he moved on from the subject of faery folklore to illustrate Tolkien and other literary works...while I discovered that my own exploration of Faerieland had only just begun. In the countryside, the old stories seemed to come alive around me; the faeries were a tangible aspect of the landscape, pulses of spirit, emotion, and light. They "insisted" on taking form under my pencil, emerging on the page before me cloaked in archetypal shapes drawn from nature and myth. I'd attracted their attention, you see, and they hadn't finished with me yet. ↗

— Brian Froud

#dartmoor #devon #drawing #fairies #fey

Elle n'avait jamais vraiment aimé les impressionnistes. Elle trouvait qu'ils manquaient d'outrance, de passion. Seul Renoir, parfois, savait traiter un corps de femme avec ce manque de respect qui lui était dû. ↗

— Romain Gary

#respect #respect

Ah, lives of men! When prosperous they glitter - Like a fair picture; when misfortune comes - A wet sponge at one blow has blurred the painting. ↗

— Aeschylus

#blow #blurred #comes #fair #glitter

...A painting was a translation of the language of my heart. ↗

— Amy Tan

#painting #art

Coming to understand a painting or a symphony in an unfamiliar style, to recognize the work of an artist or school, to see or hear in new ways, is as cognitive an achievement as learning to read or write or add. ↗

— Nelson Goodman

#add #artist #cognitive #coming #hear

I think you have to control the materials to an extent, but it's important to let the materials have a kind of power for themselves; like the natural power of gravity, if you are painting on a wall, it makes the paint trickle and it drips; there is no reason to fight that. ↗

— Keith Haring

#extent #fight #gravity #i #i think

A painting is finished when the subject comes back, when what has caused the painting to be made comes back as an object. ↗

— Howard Hodgkin

#caused #comes #finished #made #object