Painting Sayings and Quotes

Below you will find our collection of inspirational, wise, and humorous old painting quotes, painting sayings, and painting proverbs, collected over the years from a variety of sources.

Painting is just another way of keeping a diary. Pablo Picasso
Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is. Jackson Pollock
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
Painting is an illusion, a piece of magic, so what you see is not what you see. Philip Guston
Good painting is like good cooking; it can be tasted, but not explained. Maurice de Vlaminck
Painting is an infinitely minute part of my personality. Salvador Dali
Painting is easy when you don't know how, but very difficult when you do. Edgar Degas
Painting is not for me either decorative amusement, or the plastic invention of felt reality; it must be every time: invention, discovery, revelation. Max Ernst
Every painting is a voyage into a sacred harbour. Giotto di Bondone
The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through. Jackson Pollock
Painting is a nail to which I fasten my ideas. Georges Braque
Painting from nature is not copying the object; it is realizing one's sensations. Paul Cezanne
A good painting to me has always been like a friend. It keeps me company, comforts and inspires. Hedy Lamarr
Painting is by nature a luminous language. Robert Delaunay
Painting is a blind man's profession. He paints not what he sees, but what he feels, what he tells himself about what he has seen. Pablo Picasso
In painting you must give the idea of the true by means of the false. Edgar Degas
Painting is an essentially concrete art and can only consist of the representation of real and existing things. Gustave Courbet
The point of painting is not really deception or imitation. A. S. Byatt
Painting is a faith, and it imposes the duty to disregard public opinion. Vincent Van Gogh
Painting will have to deal more fully and less obliquely with life and nature's phenomena before it can again become great. Edward Hopper
Painting is a source of endless pleasure, but also of great anguish. Balthus
For me, painting is a way to forget life. It is a cry in the night, a strangled laugh. Georges Rouault
One learns about painting by looking at and imitating other painters. Frank Stella
Painting is the aesthetic side of the object but it has never been original, has never been its own goal. Kazimir Malevich
Painting becomes interesting when it becomes timeless. Peter Doig
Painting calmed the chaos that shook my soul. Niki de St. Phalle
Painting does what we cannot do - it brings a three-dimensional world into a two-dimensional plane. Chuck Jones
Painting is the frozen evidence of a performance. Chuck Close
Painting contains a divine force which... makes the dead seem almost alive. Leon Battista Alberti
Painting is the passage from the chaos of the emotions to the order of the possible. Balthus