"I think we're all born with this huge canvas in front of us and the paintbrushes and the paint, and we choose what to put on this canvas."
Canvas quotes
146 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside canvas — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"What the painter adds to the canvas are the days of his life. The adventure of living, hurtling toward death."
"I am the first to be surprised and often terrified by the images that I see appear on my canvas."
"I see for others... in order to put on canvas the sudden apparitions which come to me."
"While I am working I am not conscious of what I am putting on the canvas."
"Almost every evening, either I went to [Georges] Braque's studio or Braque came to mine. Each of us had to see what the other had done during the day. We criticized each other's work. A canvas wasn't finished unless both of us felt it was."
"The canvas has an idiotic stare and mesmerises some painters so much that they turn into idiots themselves."
"If I were to sign it now, I'd be committing forgery. I'd be putting my 1943 signature on a canvas painted in 1922."
"I say that whoever claims to have finished a canvas is terribly arrogant."
"A truly poetic canvas is an awakened dream."
"I'll take anything and slap it on a canvas."
"Have as much fun as you can and don't feel that the edge of your canvas confines you - let your vision go right on."
"Let the future remain uncertain, for that is the canvas to receive our desires."
"The 'renewed' mind is the canvas on which the Spirit of God can paint."
"I don't like poetry that just slaps violent words on a canvas, as it were."
"An uninspiring canvas becomes a glamorous masterpiece when it is reattributed to a better-known artist."
"Just dash something down if you see a blank canvas staring at you with a certain imbecility. You do not know how paralyzing it is, that staring of a blank canvas which says to the painter: you don't know anything."
"To paint is to know how to put nothing on canvas, and have it look like something when you stand back."
"For a filmmaker, it's a rare chance to do a personal film on a big canvas."
"Many painters are afraid of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas is afraid of the truly passionate painter who dares-and who has once broken the spell of 'you can't.'"
"For me, preparing the canvas takes longer than painting. The actual painting takes about half an hour."