Miles Davis
Musician
"A painting is music you can see and music is a painting you can hear."
Painting quotes
Painting
1.2K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Jacob Lawrence
Artist
"You bring to a painting your own experience."
Claude Monet
Painter
"Critic asks: 'And what, sir, is the subject matter of that painting?' - 'The subject matter, my dear good fellow, is the light."
Claude Monet
Painter
"I would advise young artists to paint as they can, as long as they can, without being afraid of painting badly."
Rainn Wilson
Actor
"Dwight is a sad clown. You've seen those paintings of sad clown."
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside painting — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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Painting quotes (page 1 of 59)
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"I am good at only two things, and those are gardening and painting."
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"Someday my paintings will be hanging in the Louvre. [Vincent Van Gogh]"
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"I am painting with the same enthusiasm as a Marseillaise eats bouillabaisse ... I am painting big sunflowers."
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"Sculpture is made by taking away, while painting is made by adding."
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"No one is an artist unless he carries his picture in his head before painting it, and is sure of his method and composition."
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"Paintings have a life of their own that derives from the painter's soul."
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"There is neither painting, nor sculpture, nor music, nor poetry. The only truth is creation."
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"If you understand a painting beforehand, you might as well not paint it."
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"What do I ask of a painting? I ask it to astonish, disturb, seduce, convince."
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"For me making a digital photo is like making a watercolor... It's not a painting, and it's not a photo. It's something altogether new."
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"Visible things can be invisible. However, our powers of thought grasp both the visible and the invisible – and I make use of painting to render thoughts visible."
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"I paint my own reality."
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"Painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war."
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"I am very depressed and deeply disgusted with painting. It is really a continual torture."
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"I can't change the fact that my paintings don't sell. But the time will come when people will recognize that they are worth more than the value of the paints used in the picture."
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"I haven't many years left ahead of me and I must devote all my time to painting, in the hope of achieving something worthwhile in the end, something if possible that will satisfy me."
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"The real subject of every painting is light."
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"If a painting can be forged well enough to fool experts, why is the original so valuable?"
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"Writing is the painting of the voice."
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"If the imagination is shackled, and nothing is described but what we see, seldom will anything truly great be produced either in Painting or Poetry"
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