Painting Quotes (page 9)
I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. I am jealous of the portrait you have painted of me. Why should it keep what I must lose? Every moment that passes takes something from me and gives something to it. Oh, if it were only the other way! If the picture could change, and I could be always what I am now! Why did you paint it? It will mock me some day—mock me horribly!
Oscar Wilde
What is 'camp'? A much misunderstood word, everyone has their own feel for it. Here is mine:
Camp is not in rugby football.
Camp is not in the Old Testament.
Camp is not in St. Paul.
Camp is not in Latin lessons, though it might be in Greek.
Camp loves colour.
Camp loves light.
Camp takes pleasure in the surface of things.
Camp loves paint as much as it loves paintings.
Camp prefers style to the stylish.
Camp is pale.
Camp is unhealthy.
Camp is not English, damn it.
But …
Camp is not...
Stephen Fry
One of the things I liked about her [Dorothy] was that she had long fingernails that she would carefully manicure and paint to fit her mood. If she were in a happy mood, her nails would be bright red. If she were feeling like she wanted to eviscerate her mother she would paint her nails burgundy.
Augusten Burroughs
The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring. Paintings of Moreau are paintings of ideas. The deepest poetry of Shelley, the words of Hamlet bring our mind into contact with the eternal wisdom; Plato's world of ideas. All the rest is the speculation of schoolboys for schoolboys.
James Joyce
At some time in the recent past someone had decided to brighten the ancient corridors of the University by painting them, having some vague notion that Learning Should Be Fun. It hadn’t worked. It’s a fact known throughout the universes that no matter how carefully the colors are chosen, institutional decor ends up as either vomit green, unmentionable brown, nicotine yellow or surgical appliance pink. By some little-understood process of sympathetic resonance, corridors painted in those...
Terry Prachett
Christ alone, of all the philosophers, magicians, etc., has affirmed eternal life as the most important certainty, the infinity of time, the futility of death, the necessity and purpose of serenity and devotion. He lived serenely, as an artist greater than all other artists, scorning marble and clay and paint, working in the living flesh. In other words, this peerless artist, scarcely conceivable with the blunt instrument of our modern, nervous and obtuse brains, made neither statues nor...
Vincent Van Gogh
When I see how several painters I know here are struggling with their watercolours and paintings so that they can't see a solution anymore, I sometimes think: Friend, the fault is in your drawing. I don't regret for a moment that I did not go in for watercolour and oil painting straight away. I am sure I will catch up if only I struggle on, so that my hand does not waver in drawing and perspective.
Vincent Van Gogh
Jeanne, I fell asleep among the paintings, where I could sit for many days worshipping your portrait. I fell in love with your portrait, Jeanne, because it will never change. I have such a fear of seeing you grow old, Jeanne, I fell in love with an unchanging you that will never be taken away from me. I was wishing you would die, so that no one could take you away from me, and I would love the painting of you as you would look eternally.
Anais Nin