Everybody thinks they know what art should be. But very few of them have the sense that is necessary to experience painting, that is the sense of sight, that sees colors and forms as living reality in the picture.
Otto Dix

I never know what it's going to look like. Wouldn't be much point in painting if I already knew the outcome. I have a subject in front of me and I start flooding colour and making marks, I don't know, it's improvisation isn't it?
Peter Wright

The painting is not on a surface, but on a plane which is imagined. It moves in a mind. It is not there physically at all. It is an illusion, a piece of magic, so that what you see is not what you see.
Philip Guston

We have as many planes of speech as does a painting planes of perspective which create perspective in a phrase. The most important word stands out most vividly defined in the very foreground of the sound plane. Less important words create a series of deeper planes.
Konstantin Stanislavisky

You know, face painting in non-Western cultures is a sign of collectivism, is a sign of one representing the community, it's not unique at all.
Joseph Jarman

I believe that the reason why I love painting so much is that it forces one to be objective. There is nothing I hate more than sentimentality.
Max Beckmann

Photography suits the temper of this age - of active bodies and minds. It is a perfect medium for one whose mind is teeming with ideas, imagery, for a prolific worker who would be slowed down by painting or sculpting, for one who sees quickly and acts decisively, accurately.
Edward Weston

I'm working on a snow scene right now, and it's summer. It's hot, and I will get chilly. I'll have to turn on the heat. My wife walks in, and it's 95 degrees in the studio. I know it's nutty, but it's a projection you have where you step into the painting.
Thomas Kinkade

Painting is an essentially concrete art and can only consist of the representation of real and existing things.
Gustave Courbet

I don't know what a painting is; who knows what sets off even the desire to paint? It might be things, thoughts, a memory, sensations, which have nothing to do directly with painting itself. They can come from anything and anywhere.
Philip Guston

Painting and sculpture are very archaic forms. It's the only thing left in our industrial society where an individual alone can make something with not just his own hands, but brains, imagination, heart maybe.
Philip Guston

Most of the power of painting comes through the manipulation of space... but I don't understand that.
Jasper Johns

The worlds I paint leave a lot to engage the imagination by hinting at what lies beyond the four edges of the painting. I think getting beyond the four edges of an opportunity or challenge is one of the basic skills you need in business.
Thomas Kinkade

In classical oil painting, there seemed to be a radical turn to seeing things as the camera sees them, with that technological modification. I began to have a tremendous problem with all of this.
Henry Flynt

But, after all, the aim of art is to create space - space that is not compromised by decoration or illustration, space within which the subjects of painting can live.
Frank Stella

In the middle 1940s... I heard everyone live. Painting, the theater; everything was happening. It was an exciting time when New York was the place to be.
Bill Dixon

I never consciously said, 'I want to be an actor.' It sounds stupid, but it's kind of like being a painter or something. You don't say, 'From today on I'm going to be a painter.' It's not something conscious - you've just been painting pictures all your life.
Franka Potente

I liked sculpting better than painting. You have more freedom in sculpting.
Anthony Quinn

I always work out of uncertainty but when a painting's finished it becomes a fixed idea, apparently a final statement. In time though, uncertainty returns... your thought process goes on.
Georg Baselitz

Well, let's say we acknowledged the School of French Painting - the Paris School of painting as the leading force and vitality of the time. I think that was understood and felt and experienced.
Lee Krasner