No person who is not a great sculptor or painter can be an architect. If he is not a sculptor or painter he can only be a builder.

Life is a great big canvas throw all the paint you can at it.

The '20s ended in an era of extravagance sort of like the one we're in now. There was a big crash but then the country picked itself up again and we had some great years. Those were the days when American believed in itself. I was happy and proud to be painting it.

What might be taken for a precocious genius is the genius of childhood. When the child grows up it disappears without a trace. It may happen that this boy will become a real painter some day or even a great painter. But then he will have to begin everything again from zero.

The little may contrast with the great in painting but cannot be said to be contrary to it. Oppositions of colors contrast but there are also colors contrary to each other that is which produce an ill effect because they shock the eye when brought very near it.

It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer. You need less imagination to be a painter because you can invent things. But in photography everything is so ordinary it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the extraordinary.

White... is not a mere absence of colour it is a shining and affirmative thing as fierce as red as definite as black... God paints in many colours but He never paints so gorgeously I had almost said so gaudily as when He paints in white.

I can very well do without God both in my life and in my painting but I cannot suffering as I am do without something which is greater than I am which is my life the power to create.

Overall the anarchy was the most creative of all periods of Japanese culture for in it there appeared the greatest landscape painting the culmination of the skill of landscape gardening and the arts of flower arrangement and the No drama.

All gardening is landscape painting.

It's funny that all these goths paint their faces with such white make-up and that is the actual colour of my skin I am that pale!

But if people want to swim in the Thames if they want to take their lives into their own hands then they should be able to do so with all the freedom and exhilaration of our woad-painted ancestors.

People ask me how I keep my figure and I tell them it's because I paint. When you're covered in paint it's quite hard to put food in your mouth!

I don't like food that's too carefully arranged it makes me think that the chef is spending too much time arranging and not enough time cooking. If I wanted a picture I'd buy a painting.

I like eating out. I like buying beautiful paintings and being surrounded by beautiful things. I have to finance that life. I can barely afford a pension scheme because I don't make enough money.

Writing is a form of therapy sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write compose or paint can manage to escape the madness melancholia the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.

I didn't know what to expect from a famous movie star maybe that he'd be sort of stuck-up you know. But not Gary Cooper. He horsed around so much... that I had a hard time painting him.

My dream maybe because of my family of course was to be a painter. I chose in one moment the direction of textiles from textiles I went to fashion.

I do not believe the picture that some people paint of Scottish towns dependent on welfare. Every time I come here I meet people who are determined to get into work. Who with the right help are desperate to get off benefits support their family and set an example for their children.

Used to be conservatives revered the Average American that Norman Rockwell oil painting of diner food humble faith honest toil and Capraesque virtue.

Painting is a faith and it imposes the duty to disregard public opinion.

Artists need some kind of stimulating experience a lot of times which crystallizes when you sing about it or paint it or sculpt it. You literally mold the experience the way you want. It's therapy.

I always thought that one of the reasons why a painter likes especially to have other painters look at his or her work is the shared experience of having pushed paint around.

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.