#painting

It's often about the simple things, isn't it? Painting and photography are first about seeing, they say. Writing is about observing. Technique is secondary. Sometimes the simple is the most difficult. ↗

— Linda Olsson

#painting #photography #simple #writing #art

Your mind is a canvas, your experiences are the paint colors and your actions are the brushes that show the art in you. ↗

— Louise Philippe Dulay

#artist #artistry #canvas #inspire #life

I never look at a painting and ask, "Is this painting fictional or non-fictional?" It's just a painting. ↗

— Scott McClanahan

#fiction #fictional #nonfiction #paintings #art

If some people see angels where others only see empty space, let them paint the angels; only let not anybody else think they can paint an angel too, on any calculated principles of the angelic. ↗

— John Ruskin

#beauty

Only the painter who knows his business can create the impression that a picture was done in one stroke. ↗

— Pierre Auguste-Renoir

#painting #art

both you and paintings are layered… first, ephemera and notations on the back of the canvas. Labels indicate gallery shows, museum shows, footprints in the snow, so to speak. Then pencil scribbles on the stretcher, usually by the artist, usually a title or date. Next the stretcher itself. Pine or something. Wooden triangles in the corners so the picture can be tapped tighter when the canvas becomes loose. Nails in the wood securing the picture to the stretcher. Next, a canvas: linen, muslin, sometimes a panel; then the gesso - a primary coat, always white. A layer of underpaint, usually a pastel color, then, the miracle, where the secrets are: the paint itself, swished around, roughly, gently, layer on layer, thick or thin, not more than a quarter of an inch ever -- God can happen in that quarter of an inch -- the occasional brush hair left embedded, colors mixed over each other, tones showing through, sometimes the weave of the linen revealing itself. The signature on top of the entire goulash. Then varnish is swabbed over the whole. Finally, the frame, translucent gilt or carved wood. The whole thing is done. ↗

— Steve Martin

#beauty #painting #art

In actuality, we don't look for smiles in pictures of bliss, but rather, for the happiness in life itself. Painters know this, but this is preciously what they cannot depict. That's why they substitute the joy of seeing for the joy of life. ↗

— Orhan Pamuk

#joy-of-life #joy-of-seeing #painting #life

On the opposite wall was a Damien Hirst spot painting, bought by Arabella after a decent bonus season. Roger's considered view of the painting, looking at it from aesthetic, art-historical, interior-design, and psychological points of view, was that it had cost forty-seven thousand pounds, plus VAT. ↗

— John Lanchester

#costs #expenses #paintings #worth #art

[I]t was [Barnett] Newman who made the famously wry remark, “Aesthetics is for the artist as ornithology is for the birds, ↗

— Ross Wetzsteon

#art #artist #barnett-newman #painting #art

If London is a watercolor, New York is an oil painting. ↗

— Peter Shaffer

#new #new york #oil #painting #watercolor