Art Quotations of the Week - 5 February 2006

I collect quotations about art. I find they usually make me pause for thought and often give me an insight or an alternative perspective on being an artist and the process of creating artwork. And, of course, sometimes, they just remind you that there's nothing new under the sun and whatever problem or dilemma I am currently faced with has been experienced by somebody else before.

I've got art quotations on my website - I find they can often be a succinct way of highlighting what you want to say about a page without it actually needing to be my words.

I'm going to post a few art quotations each week - because I'll never be able to just limit myself to one! I thought I'd start by identifying those I currently have on my website and why I chose them

Painting is just another way of keeping a diary"
Pablo Picasso

I love this quotation - it speaks of the way in which painting records your life and experience. I love my sketchbooks because they record my travels and different times in my life in a way which nothing else could ever do. I look at each drawing or painting and I remember doing it, where I was sat, what the place/weather/people were like and how it made me feel. Because you connect so strongly with a place or a person or an object when you draw or paint it, the process stores away memories in a way that photos never ever can.

I've used the Picasso quotation to kick off the introduction page of the "Travels with a Sketchbook" ection of my website

(I wonder if Picasso would have had a blog with a daily painting ;) )


"Nothing makes me so happy as to observe nature and to paint what I see"
Henri Rousseau


The quotation by Rousseau is on the introduction page to the galleries of Landscape paintings on my website. I've been painting landscapes for very many years now and most of them were started or completed working from life "en plain air" in front of the subject. The Rousseau quote really summed up for me the way it makes me feel - especially when you get a good site and nice weather.

And I've posted two photos of me plein air painting using pastels in Devon. It looks idyllic in the first, but the second shows what it was really like - not the easiest place to sit! But it was still a truly wonderful and very memorable morning!

What I wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house"
Edward Hopper

Me too! I love painting sunlight and shadows and I use this quotation to start the gallery of paintings of Houses and Gardens within the Landscapes section of the website. There's an awful lot of sunlight and shadows in that gallery! And it includes my very first "sunlight on the side of a house" painting. It's called "The Lemon Tree House" and it's a painting of a small greek house (in Volissos on the Greek island of Chios) with amazing shadows from the lemon trees on its white painted walls. And that's not dodgy perspective drawing - the wall was in fact falling down and lurching very badly! It's not the best painting I've ever done but it was the first one when I began to realise what I might be able to accomplish as it generated a "Wow" reaction from everybody I was painting with. I completed it in one sitting of maybe two and half hours in pastels on an abrasive support (Rembrandt pastel card). It measures 19.5" x 25.5"



Whoops - nearly forgot the Tags
art , art quotations , artist websites, painting , drawing , sketching , sketchbooks , plein air painting , landscape painting , pastels ,