Quotes about Art

I work as diligently on my canvases as the laborers do in their fields.

My great longing is to learn to make those very incorrectnesses, those deviations, remodellings, changes of reality, so that they may become, yes, untruth if you like - but more true than the literal truth.

it has always been so much my desire to paint for those who don't know the artistic side of a painting.

A good picture is equivalent to a good deed.

So don't study and swot too much, for that makes one sterile. Enjoy yourself too much rather than too little, and don't take art or love too seriously- there is very little one can do about it

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.

Do go on doing a lot of walking and keep up your love of nature, for that is the right way to understand art better and better. Painters understand nature and love her and teach us to see. And there are painters who never do anything that is no good...

I couldn't care less what the colours are in reality.

You don't know how paralyzing that is, that stare of a blank canvas, which says to the painter, 'You can't do a thing'.

I have had no "guidance or teaching" from others to speak of, but taught myself; no wonder my technique, considered superficially, differs from that of others. But that's no reason for my work to remain unsaleable. I feel pretty sure that the large "Sorrow," "The Old Woman of the Geest," the "Old Man," and others, will find a purchaser someday.

Housed in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the following plate was completed in 1886, portraying the unusual subject of a skeleton smoking a cigarette. The work has roused many interpretations, including a depiction of mortality and a prophetic cry of the dangers of tobacco. In the next two years, van Gogh painted two other paintings with skulls, illustrating his fascination with the macabre subject.

In an artist's life, death is perhaps not the most difficult thing.