Paint Sayings and Quotes

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

I'd asked around ten or fifteen people for suggestions. Finally one lady friend asked the right question. 'Well, what do you love the most?' That's how I started painting money. Andy Warhol
An amateur is someone who supports himself with outside jobs which enable him to paint. A professional is someone whose wife works to enable him to paint. Ben Shahn
Art is making something out of nothing and selling it. Frank Zappa
Painting, n. The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critic. Ambrose Bierce
Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend. John Singer Sargent
The artist is not a reporter, but a Great Teacher. It is not his business to depict the world as it is, but as it ought to be. H. L. Mencken
A painting in a museum hears more ridiculous opinions than anything else in the world. Edmond de Goncourt
The world today doesn't make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do? Pablo Picasso
Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things. Edgar Degas
A man paints with his brains and not with his hands. Michaelangelo
I experience a period of frightening clarity in those moments when nature is so beautiful. I am no longer sure of myself, and the paintings appear as in a dream. Vincent van Gogh
A good painter is to paint two main things, men and the working of man's mind. Leonardo da Vinci
Painting is the nail to which I fasten my ideas. Georges Braque
Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern. Alfred North Whitehead
I've been doing a lot of abstract painting lately, extremely abstract. No brush, no canvas, I just think about it. Steven Wright
Every good painter paints what he is. Jackson Pollock
Good painting is the kind that looks like sculpture. Michaelangelo
In my experience, anyone can paint if he doesn't have to. Beatrice Lillie
The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through. Jackson Pollock
I say that good painters imitated nature, but that bad ones vomited it. Miguel de Cervantes
I paint my own reality. The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to, and I paint whatever passes through my head without any other consideration. Frida Kahlo
If painting is no longer needed, it seems a pity that some of us are born into the world with such a passion for line and color. Mary Cassatt
The passion ... is transmuted during the act of painting from rage to euphoria. Jane Champagne
Through some memory, feeling, experience, the passion wells up and spills into my palette; it mixes with my paint. And the paint tells me what to do. I listen. I act on it. Ann Dettmer
No one but myself knows the anxiety I go through and the trouble I give myself to finish paintings which do not satisfy me and seem to please so very few others. Claude Monet
What I say to an artist is, "When you can't paint—paint." Joyce Cary
When I start to paint, it is real agony. I get nervous. The day before, I am already working up to it. Then I get to the studio and, once the image starts to emerge and come together, pleasure kicks in. And then you can see things that no other person can see. Luc Tuymans
There are many things one thinks about in a painting. Often, it's how to handle your chosen medium and how to best reveal the light in a three-dimensional form on a two-dimensional surface. Janice Tanton