I think people have to choose between living with contradictions or painting themselves into a corner. I have a lot of contradictions.
Any promising young white man rich enough to theoretically afford a giant oil painting of himself gets to remain young and innocent forever, and none of his actions have any consequences, whether there is magic involved or not.
American poetry, like American painting, is always personal with an emphasis on the individuality of the poet.
I used to do stop motion in my own garage and Claymation and all that stuff. That led to doing backgrounds and matte paintings. I started doing matte paintings professionally back before the computer, sort of painting on glass.
Does any art have a practical value? People love to talk about how expensive a painting is. That's the only way we can talk about paintings in this century.
Easel painting means small painting.
I always feel attacked when I'm asked about my painting.
Painting, I think it's like jazz.
Turning one's novel into a movie script is rather like making a series of sketches for a painting that has long ago been finished and framed.
When I was in art college, I would be painting, and I would create something on a canvas that was actually quite attractive. But if I got frightened and tried to protect that, that canvas would die.
I liked painting and drawing, and I liked humanities mainly - poetry, literature - this speculative attitude toward life.
I try to not get to the point where one is making wallpaper, or simply painting money. I want to make sure that I am at least trying to weigh myself down, that there's a challenge each time.
I always wanted to be a painter. I loved painting. I went on three different art courses but had no talent whatsoever.
When children draw or do rudimentary painting, the whole human being develops an interest in what is being done. This is why we should allow writing to develop from drawing.
If you want to paint the inner life, you paint it from the exterior. From the exterior, you breathe the inner life into your painting.
My main thing was painting; I was just going to do that.
But when I started writing songs, I stopped painting completely, and the only art things I do are connected to the career, like album sleeves and, to some extent, posters and things like that.
I cannot remember a time when I was not interested in both gardening and painting. I must have been born with a trowel in one hand and a paintbrush in the other.
I'm very representational some of the time, and a little all of the time. But when you're painting out of your unconscious, figures are bound to emerge.
People were very affected by the war. But it didn't mean you stopped painting unless you were called into the Army; then you just couldn't paint. But otherwise one continued.
I always sang. I wanted to be in a band with my sister, and I was, at 11. At 12, I started writing seriously, and that was my pacifier all through high school - that and painting.
Painting is, I think, inevitably an archaic activity and one that depends on spiritual values.
Painting is the passage from the chaos of the emotions to the order of the possible.
Painting is the aesthetic side of the object but it has never been original, has never been its own goal.
Painting and music were the only things I worked at industriously and faithfully.
Mount Tamalpais became my house. For Cezanne, Sainte-Victoire was no longer a mountain. It was an absolute. It was painting.
I do have a dream, a painting, the baths of La Grenouillere for which I've done a few bad rough sketches, but it is a dream. Renoir, who has just spent two months here, also wants to do this painting.
Painting's not important. The important thing is keeping busy.
In my world, history comes down to language and art. No one cares much about what battles were fought, who won them and who lost them - unless there is a painting, a play, a song or a poem that speaks of the event.
A painting that doesn't shock isn't worth painting.
I think music has gone through a period of something very severe, rather radical, rather the way painting did with cubism.
No one purposefully paints a bad painting. It's someone who's trying to do a good painting, but it's terrible. I have one with a matador, and the bull is going through the blanket. You can tell the painter didn't know how to paint it.
I never know what it's going to look like. Wouldn't be much point in painting if I already knew the outcome. I have a subject in front of me and I start flooding colour and making marks, I don't know, it's improvisation isn't it?
To make money, I did portraits . The truth is so bizarre! I'm kind of embarrassed. I was like a 19th-century pirate painter. I'd say, 'Your mom would love a painting of you!' A salesman! I'd hawk paintings.
When I'm painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. It's only after a get acquainted period that I see what I've been about. I've no fears about making changes for the painting has a life of its own.
I've always enjoyed painting, but I went to teach in schools in Zimbabwe instead.
