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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"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."
"The laws of physics are the canvas God laid down on which to paint his masterpiece."
"It is a good thing to stand away from the canvas from time to time and take a full view of the picture."
"Someone spilled the ink on the canvas. Now boasts: "I painted the night"."
"Just slap something on it when you see a blank canvas staring at you with a sort of imbecility."
"You should treat your body like a canvas."
"Lives are mere blips on the canvas of eternity."
"Life is a big ol' canvas. And you have every combination of colors to paint with."
"... a canvas that I have covered is worth more than a blank canvas. My pretensions go no further; that is my right to paint, my reason for painting."
"He made his colours, built his stretchers, plastered his canvas, painted his pictures, carpentered his frames, and painted them. 'Too bad I can't buy my own pictures,' he murmured aloud. 'Then I'd be completely self-sufficient.'"
"Painting is the pattern of one's own nervous system being projected on canvas."
"I feel that I am much freer if I'm on my own, but I'm sure that there are a lot of painters who would perhaps be even more inventive if they had people round them... I find that if I am on my own I can allow the paint to dictate to me. So the images that I'm putting down on the canvas dictate the thing to me and it gradually builds up and comes along."
"I believe I have had the most trouble with a portrait which I painted in installments - the head on one canvas and the bust on another."
"I really enjoy squeezing out a big lump of paint directly onto the canvas and leaving it; fresh, immediate and sometimes shocking."
