#Painting

"Painting is easy when you don't know how, but very difficult when you do."

"Painting is just another way of keeping a diary."

"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."

"Create with the heart; build with the mind."

"My painting does not come from the easel."

"Painting is an infinitely minute part of my personality."

"I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art."

"When I am finishing a picture, I hold some God-made object up to it - a rock, a flower, the branch of a tree or my hand - as a final test. If the painting stands up beside a thing man cannot make, the painting is authentic. If there's a clash between the two, it's bad art."

"Painting is by nature a luminous language."

"As a composer and as a musician I'm a true believer - and this is not to be overly diplomatic - I'm a believer that there's artistry in everything from a lawn gnome to a desk chair to a symphony to an Andy Warhol painting. There's art in absolutely everything."

"If commercialization is putting my art on a shirt so that a kid who can't afford a $30,000 painting can buy one, then I'm all for it."

"A good painting to me has always been like a friend. It keeps me company, comforts and inspires."

"Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is."

"Painting completed my life."

"Painting is a nail to which I fasten my ideas."

"When I go to an art gallery and stand in front of a painting, I don't want someone telling me what I should be seeing or thinking; I want to feel whatever I feel, see whatever I see, and figure out what I figure out."

"I think of my peace paintings as one long poem, with each painting being a single stanza."

"Comedy is the one absolutely self-aware art form. Actually, hip-hop's another one, I suppose. Because in your songs you're talking about how good a hip-hop artist you are. It's like a painter painting a panting of himself painting a painting."

"Painting, n.: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather, and exposing them to the critic."

"I have no fear of making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own."