The mind paints before the brush.

One always has to spoil a picture a little bit, in order to finish it.

In painting you must give the idea of the true by means of the false.

A painting can do something for your spirit that nothing else can.

(Van Gogh was) a man who did not seek to seize or hold a kingdom but to give one away.

Good painting is like good cooking; it can be tasted, but not explained.

I have walked this earth for 30 years, and, out of gratitude, want to leave some souvenir.

A painter should not paint what he sees, but what will be seen.

The artist finds a greater pleasure in painting than in having completed the picture.

(Matisse painted) not as a pastime, but as a way of embracing life.

I understand my own pictures best six months after I have done them.

There are only two styles of portrait painting: the serious and the smirk.

All art is bad, but modern art is the worst.

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

In painting, the most brilliant colors, spread at random and without design, will give far less pleasure than the simplest outline of a figure.

... a canvas that I have covered is worth more than a blank canvas. My pretensions go no further; that is my right to paint, my reason for painting.

When I am finished painting, I paint again for relaxation.

Painting is the intermediate between a thought and a thing.

Few people can look at a painting longer than it takes to peel an orange and eat it.

A painter told me that nobody could draw a tree without in some sort becoming a tree.