Attention is the beginning of devotion. — Mary Oliver Oil paint was made for depicting flesh. — Willem DeKooning Compared to, say, watching a fireworks display, painting is a decidedly jumbled way of perceiving. Watching fireworks is just that—watching. Eyeballing a show, a spectacle, a rebus (from the Latin non...
It is better to be fervent in spirit, even if one accordingly makes more mistakes, than narrow-minded and overly cautious. — Vincent Van Gogh It's juvenile to think so, but a fortune cookie has provided my new mantra. I paint for the most part alla prima in oil,...
Humanity is not produced by the way our eyes are implanted in us. — Maurice Merleau-Ponty Writing in The New Yorker this week, art critic Peter Schjeldahl says of Cezanne, "He revolutionized visual art, changing a practice of rendering illusions to one of aggregating marks that cohere...
A painter should not paint what he sees, but what will be seen. — Paul Valéry Every painter—even realists—spends years training to "abstract" scenes; to cease to see only objects and begin to see only lines, shapes, contours, and shadows. Ceasing to see only objects is not an...
Painting is the only art in which the intuitive qualities of the artistic may be more valuable than actual knowledge or intelligence. — Lucian Freud In his History of Art, Pliny the Elder recounts how a well-meaning art critic, a shoemaker by trade, told the Ancient Greek...
Paintings are to teach man to see the glory of human existence. — Henry Hensche Why are there paintings? That's not a vexed question. Paintings uncover truths. They do so by making visible what was invisible. Just as surely as a scientific observation does, that act of revelation increases humankind's storehouse...
Do not just pick up the brushes you used yesterday because they are there. Put those back and then choose your weapon, like a certain type of gun or sword. You are going into battle and you want the best weapon for the job. — Richard...
Imitation is not inspiration. Inspiration only can give birth to a work of art. ― Albert Pinkham Ryder Hyperallergic asks, why do AI-generated portraits, such as those produced by the website AI Gahaku, fail? AI Gahaku filters your photo to create a "masterpiece" in seconds. But the results fall short...