My painting does not come from the easel.
Every good picture leaves the painter eager to start again, unsatisfied, inspired by the rich mine in which he is working, hoping for more energy, more vitality, more time - condemned to painting for life.
Movies are weird; it's like trying to make a painting with one hundred people. It's a weird world, but every job is weird; it's always a little bit hard, crazy and fun, a nice combination.
My latest decorating obsession is dipping - like painting the bottom of things. I've done it to almost every terra-cotta pot in my house. Every African vase I have is painted gold on the bottom. It's so fun and easy, and it instantly livens up a piece. You feel like you've really accomplished something.
Look at any inspired painting. It's like a gong sounding; it puts you in a state of reverberation.
I dream a lot. I do more painting when I'm not painting. It's in the subconscious.
Simultaneous contrast is not just a curious optical phenomenon - it is the very heart of painting.
To do a drawing for a painting most often means doing something very sketchy and schematic and then later making it polished.
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'm just a landscape painter. I look out the window and I see what's going on, and I paint it. While I'm painting it, I also write thoughts about what I see going on out there.
Painting is a very difficult thing. It absorbs the whole man, body and soul, thus have I passed blindly many things which belong to real and political life.
But when I worked on a painting I would do it from a drawing but I would put certain things I was fairly sure I wanted in the painting, and then collage on the painting with printed dots or painted paper or something before I really committed it.
I learned a lot of painting tricks painting outside.
Good painting is the kind that looks like sculpture.
Photography suits the temper of this age - of active bodies and minds. It is a perfect medium for one whose mind is teeming with ideas, imagery, for a prolific worker who would be slowed down by painting or sculpting, for one who sees quickly and acts decisively, accurately.
The dog, the rabbit and the hoop all feature in the painting, and take the place of the orrery.
Mostly people are ignorant, what is the language of painting. You know, they're ignorant. It is so difficult to make them aware, but time will teach them.
I stopped painting in 1990 at the peak of my success just to deny people my beautiful paintings, and I did it out of spite.
Over the years I always did some water colors, and I did a series of pictures of drawings. I always did it during a period of time that was slow in the photo business, but in essence it was always frustrating because I'd get started, and then it would be time to get back to work and I wouldn't get anywhere with the painting.
Painting is sometimes like those recipes where you do all manner of elaborate things to a duck, and then end up putting it on one side and only using the skin.
I will keep painting until I die.
My primary thing is to make a painting, not necessarily to make a painting to sell for gazillions of dollars, but just to make a painting.
My popularity has to do with the divorce between modern art, where everything is obscure, and the viewer who often feels he needs a professor to tell them whether it's good or not. I believe a painting has to talk directly to the viewer, with composition, color and design, without a professor to explain it.
I have been surrounded by artists and paintings throughout my life. My father Ted Dyer is an artist, and from a very early age I have spent time painting and drawing.
When you are older, you realise that everything else is just nothing compared to painting and drawing.
The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through.
I think of painting without subject matter as music without words.
My mother was the most creative, fantastic person and would come up with great things for us to do. She'd buy art supplies and all of us would sit around painting. I was lucky.
I don't believe in making pencil sketches and then painting landscape in your studio. You must be right under the sky.
I'm sickened by all religions. Religion has divided people. I don't think there's any difference between the pope wearing a large hat and parading around with a smoking purse and an African painting his face white and praying to a rock.
A good painting to me has always been like a friend. It keeps me company, comforts and inspires.
Remember that a painting - before it is a battle horse, a nude model, or some anecdote - is essentially a flat surface covered with colours assembled in a certain order.
Painting is seen as picture making, the making of an art object, something that can stand on its own.
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.
I was a student at Harvard, and that's where I learned about so-called avant-garde music. Jackson Pollock, abstract expressionism and painting were well known at this time.
Painting is a coalescing of experience.
