Profoundly inspirational painting quotes will brighten up your day and make you feel ready to take on anything.
Famous Painting Quotes
If the world really looks like that I will paint no more! Claude Monet
Painting is self discovery. Every good artist paints what he is. Jackson Pollock
I started painting as a hobby when I was little. I didn’t know I had any talent. I believe talent is just a pursued interest. Bob Ross
I don’t paint dreams or nightmares, I paint my own reality. Frida Kahlo
Painting is the most beautiful of all arts. Paul Gauguin
Painting is just another way of keeping a diary. Pablo Picasso
I think each of us, sometime in our life, has wanted to paint a picture. Bob Ross
Painting is an illusion, a piece of magic, so what you see is not what you see. Philip Guston
I would like to paint the way a bird sings. Claude Monet
If you hear a voice within you say you cannot paint, then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced. Vincent Van Gogh
It doesn’t matter how the paint is put on, as long as something is said. Jackson Pollock
A painting to me is primarily a verb, not a noun, an event first and only secondarily an image. Elaine de Kooning
I decided that if I could paint that flower in a huge scale, you could not ignore its beauty. Georgia O’ Keeffe
A painting requires a little mystery, some vagueness, and some fantasy. When you always make your meaning perfectly plain you end up boring people. Edgar Degas
Painting is self discovery. Every good artist paints what he is. Jackson Pollock
Painting is a source of endless pleasure, but also of great anguish. Balthus
I don’t paint dreams or nightmares, I paint my own reality. Frida Kahlo
I love to look at art, I love to look at paintings, and I almost feel like the experience isn’t complete until I’ve made something of my own. Cecily Brown
Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is a painting that speaks. Plutarch
Painting is concerned with all the 10 attributes of sight; which are Darkness, Light, Solidity and Colour, Form and Position, Distance and Propinquity, Motion and Rest. Leonardo da Vinci
The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can clarify in paint. Georgia O’ Keeffe
When you want to make the main color pure and bright, don’t just keep adding bright colors on it. Just make the colors around the spot darker and dull. It will give the scene dramatical effects. I think the life is the same. Hiroko Sakai
I have no fears about making changes, destroying the image because the painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through. Jackson Pollock
If you could say it in words, there would be no reason to paint. Edward Hopper
A hill or tree cannot make a good painting just because it is a hill or tree. It is lines and colors put together so that they may say something. Georgia O’ Keeffe
Every canvas is a journey all its own. Helen Frankenthaler
There is something particularly fascinating about seeing places you know in a piece of art be that in a film, or a photograph, or a painting. Sara Sheridan
Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun. Pablo Picasso
I wanted to paint a picture someday that people would stand before and forget that it was made of paint. O. Henry
They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself. Andy Warhol
Moonlight is sculpture; sunlight is painting. Nathaniel Hawthorne
If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, will answer you I am here to live out loud. Émile Zola
A painting requires a little mystery, some vagueness, and some fantasy. When you always make your meaning perfectly plain you end up boring people. Edgar Degas
The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity. Alberto Giacometti
There is something beautiful about a blank canvas, the nothingness of the beginning that is so simple and breathtakingly pure. It’s the paint that changes its meaning and the hand that creates the story. Piper Payne
Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time. Thomas Merton
A fine work of art music, dance, painting, story has the power to silence the chatter in the mind and lift us to another place. Robert McKee
We don’t make mistakes, just happy little accidents. Bob Ross
Painting is the silence of thought and the music of sight. Orhan Pamuk
I am seeking. I am striving. I am in it with all my heart. Vincent van Gogh
There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted. Henri Matisse
Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing. Salvador Dali
Painting is the grandchild of nature. It is related to God. Rembrandt van Rijn
In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Painting is an illusion, a piece of magic, so what you see is not what you see. Philip Guston
Art must be an expression of love or it is nothing. Marc Chagall
I love to look at art, I love to look at paintings, and I almost feel like the experience isn’t complete until I’ve made something of my own. Cecily Brown
Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. Oscar Wilde
I paint the spirit and soul of what I see. Brian Froud
Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art. Andy Warhol
The artist must train not only his eye but also his soul. Wassily Kandinsky
I paint for myself. I don’t know how to do anything else, anyway. Also I have to earn my living, and occupy myself. Francis Bacon
An artist must have his measuring tools not in the hand, but in the eye. Michelangelo
The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real. Lucian Freud
The world today doesn’t make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do? Pablo Picasso
Nature is not only all that is visible to the eye it also includes the inner pictures of the soul. Edvard Munch
What keeps my heart awake is colorful silence. Claude Monet
An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one. Charles Horton Cooley
I paint objects as I think them not as I see them. Pablo Picasso
Art is the only way to run away without leaving home. Twyla Tharp
If you could say it in words there would be no reason to paint. Edward Hopper
For me, painting is a way to forget life. It is a cry in the night, a strangled laugh. Georges Rouault
I’m not performing miracles, I’m using up and wasting a lot of paint. Claude Monet
Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. Scott Adams
The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls. Pablo Picasso
It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to, the feeling for the things themselves, for reality, is more important than the feeling for pictures. Vincent Van Gogh
Abstract art should be enjoyed just as music is enjoyed after a while, you may like it or you may not. Jackson Pollock
Painting is the grandchild of nature. It is related to God. Rembrandt
Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun. Pablo Picasso
To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it. Kurt Vonnegut
What art is, in reality, is this missing link, not the links which exist. It’s not what you see that is art; art is the gap. Marcel Duchamp
It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academicism. There is no such thing as good painting about nothing. Mark Rothko
Every morning when I wake up, I experience an exquisite joy the joy of being Salvador Dalí and I ask myself in rapture What wonderful things is this Salvador Dalí going to accomplish today? Salvador Dalí
The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize. Robert Hughes
All you need to paint is a few tools, a little instruction, and a vision in your mind. Bob Ross
The object isn’t to make art, it’s to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable. Robert Henri
Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. Pablo Picasso
Go and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. Make. Good. Art. Neil Gaiman
Treat a work of art like a prince. Let it speak to you first. Arthur Schopenhauer
Art will remain the most astonishing activity of mankind born out of struggle between wisdom and madness, between dream and reality in our mind. Magdalena Abakanowicz
The world always seems brighter when you’ve just made something that wasn’t there before. Neil Gaiman
Painting is the silence of thought and the music of sight. Orhan Pamuk
In the mind of every artist there is a masterpiece. Kai Greene
Create with the heart; build with the mind. Criss Jami
Every artist was first an amateur. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every now and then one paints a picture that seems to have opened a door and serves as a stepping stone to other things. Pablo Picasso
You might as well ask an artist to explain his art, or ask a poet to explain his poem. It defeats the purpose. The meaning is only clear thorough the search. Rick Riordan
Sometimes painting is just prayerful movement. And that is enough. Carrie Schmitt
Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. Oscar Wilde
Creativity is painting the canvas with colors, doing what you do with what you have, knowing the limits and moving beyond. Anand Patwa
Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures. Henry Ward Beecher
Every viewer is going to get a different thing. That’s the thing about painting, photography, and cinema. David Lynch
Art is unquestionably one of the purest and highest elements in human happiness. It trains the mind through the eye, and the eye through the mind. John Lubbock
I hope you enjoy reading this collection of painting quotes. Let me know which one you like most.
