Immerse yourself in rich insights with the best collection of painting quotes and sayings. These phrases are not merely words but a gallery of reflections that reveal the beauty of the artistic world.
Artists, with their vivid imagination, find in their paintbrush and colors a way to manifest their ideas onto the canvas.
Paintings are a deeply personal expression of the artist’s soul where the painter puts his ideas into vision. And just like a poet uses words as their creative conduit, painters use strokes and hues to narrate their silent, visual poems.
As the popular saying says; “A picture is worth a thousand words” Similarly a painting is a window to an artist’s soul and mind. It gives you a sneak peek into the thoughts and feelings of the artist.
And, these painting quotes by famous artists can really inspire you and help you connect with your inner creativity.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a professional artist, someone who enjoys art as a hobby, or just someone who likes looking at nice paintings, these quotes are sure to touch your heart and open your mind to new ideas.
Top 10 Painting Quotes
- “Create with the heart; build with the mind.” — Criss Jami
- “Painting is the expression of the soul in colors.” — Trisha. J
- “Painting gives wings to my imagination.” — Trisha.J
- “Painting is but another word for feeling.” — John Constable
- “A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.” — Michelangelo
painting quotes - “Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks.” — Plutarch
- “Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.” — Pablo Picasso
famous painting quotes - “If you could say it in words, there would be no reason to paint.” — Edward Hopper
- “A painting is never finished – it simply stops in interesting places.” — Paul Gardner
- “Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.” — Oscar Wilde
- “For me, painting is a way to forget life. It is a cry in the night, a strangled laugh.” — Georges Rouault
- “Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.” — Henry Ward Beecher
Painting Quotes
- “Painting is the grandchild of nature. It is related to God.” — Rembrandt
- “Painting is the silence of thought and the music of sight.” — Orhan Pamuk
- “Painting is a source of endless pleasure, but also of great anguish.” — Balthus
- “Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is.” — Jackson Pollock
- “All you need to paint is a few tools, a little instruction, and a vision in your mind.” — Bob Ross
- “Painting is an illusion, a piece of magic, so what you see is not what you see.” — Philip Guston
- “The painter will produce pictures of little merit if he takes the works of others as his standard.” — Leonardo da Vinci
- “A painting to me is primarily a verb, not a noun, an event first and only secondarily an image.” — Elaine de Kooning
- “If you hear a voice within you say you cannot paint, then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.” — Vincent Van Gogh
- “I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way–things I had no words for.” — Georgia O’Keeffe
Best Quotes About Painting
- “Every canvas is a journey all its own.” — Helen Frankenthaler
- “Art is the only way to run away without leaving home.” — Twyla Tharp
- “Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes
- “An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one.” — Charles Horton Cooley
- “Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.” — Salvador Dali
- “The holy grail is to spend less time making the picture than it takes people to look at it.” — Banksy
- “The canvas, color palette, and my thoughts collaborate to bring my artistic ideas to life. ” — Trisha.J
- “In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity.” — Alberto Giacometti
- “Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.” — Leonardo da Vinci
- “Every now and then one paints a picture that seems to have opened a door and serves as a stepping stone to other things.” — Pablo Picasso
Painting Quote
- “Art must be an expression of love or it is nothing.” — Marc Chagall
- “Through a painting we can see the whole world.” — Hans Hofmann
- “I don’t paint dreams or nightmares, I paint my own reality.” — Frida Kahlo
- “There is no blue without yellow and without orange.” — Vincent Van Gogh
- “I dream of painting and then I paint my dream.” — Vincent van Gogh
quotes about painting - “There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.” — Vincent Van Gogh
- “Painting is easy when you don’t how, but very difficult when you do.” — Edgar Degas
- “Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” — Thomas Merton
- “If you understand a painting beforehand, you might as well not paint it.” — Salvador Dalí
- “Painting something that defies the law of the land is good. Painting something that defies the law of the land and the law of gravity at the same time is ideal.” — Banksy
- “Painting is concerned with all the 10 attributes of sight; which are: Darkness, Light, Solidity and Colour, Form and Position, Distance and Propinquity, Motion and Rest.” — Leonardo da Vinci
Famous Quotes On Painting
- “We don’t make mistakes, just happy little accidents.” — Bob Ross
- “Without atmosphere a painting is nothing.” — Rembrandt Harmenszoon Van Rijn
- “Sometimes painting is just prayerful movement. And that is enough.” — Carrie Schmitt
- “They paint what they see and we paint what we are watching.” — David Berkowitz Chicago
- “Painting has as much to do with evolving consciousness as training the eye.” — Glenn Haybittle
- “If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, will answer you: I am here to live out loud.” — Émile Zola
- “Life, like a good painting, needs balance, a harmonious arrangement to avoid being chaotic, a mess, a failure.” — Iain Pear
- “I paint for myself. I don’t know how to do anything else, anyway. Also I have to earn my living, and occupy myself.” — Francis Bacon
- “Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.”— Andy Warhol
Paint Quotes
- “To create one’s own world takes courage.” — Georgia O’Keeffe
- “The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to.” — Frida Kahlo
- “If I paint something, I don’t want to have to explain what it is.” — Bob Ross
- “My business is to paint what I see, not what I know is there.” — M.W. Turner
- “I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best.” — Frida Kahlo
- “My paintings are not about what is seen. They are about what is known forever in the mind.” — Agnes Martin
- “Nature is not only all that is visible to the eye.. it also includes the inner pictures of the soul.” — Edvard Munch
- “Every viewer is going to get a different thing. That’s the thing about painting, photography, and cinema.” — David Lynch
- “The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.” — Robert Hughes
- “I love to look at art, I love to look at paintings, and I almost feel like the experience isn’t complete until I’ve made something of my own.” — Cecily Brown
Painting Quotes To Inspire Creativity
- “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.” — Pablo Picasso
- “Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.” — Edgar Degas
- “Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.” — Scott Adams
- “They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.” — Andy Warhol
- “The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real.” — Lucian Freud
- “Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun.” — Pablo Picasso
- “The aim of art is not to represent the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.” — Aristotle
- “Creativity is painting the canvas with colors, doing what you do with what you have, knowing the limits and moving beyond.” — Anand Patwa
- “A painting requires a little mystery, some vagueness, and some fantasy. When you always make your meaning perfectly plain you end up boring people.” — Edgar Degas
- “When you want to make the main color pure and bright, don’t just keep adding bright colors on it. Just make the colors around the spot darker and dull. It will give the scene dramatical effects. I think the life is the same.” — Hiroko Sakai
Painting Quotes On Art
- “To create a work of art is to create the world.” —Kandinsky
- “Life is a painting. Let’s paint it with the living colors!” —Unknown
- “There is no must in art because art is free.” — Wassily Kandinsky
- “If London is a watercolor, New York is an oil painting.” — Peter Shaffer
- “The object isn’t to make art, it’s to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.” — Robert Henri
- “To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it.” — Kurt Vonnegut
- “Art will remain the most astonishing activity of mankind born out of struggle between wisdom and madness, between dream and reality in our mind.” — Magdalena Abakanowicz
- “Go and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. Make. Good. Art.” — Neil Gaiman
- “It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to, the feeling for the things themselves, for reality, is more important than the feeling for pictures.” — Vincent Van Gogh
- “It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academicism. There is no such thing as good painting about nothing.” — Mark Rothko
Famous Painters and Paintings
Art history is filled with the names of countless masters, each contributing uniquely to the world of painting.
Among them, Leonardo da Vinci, famed for his iconic masterpiece “Mona Lisa,” and “The Last Supper,” remains an enduring symbol of the Italian Renaissance.
His contemporary, Michelangelo, renowned for painting the Sistine Chapel, was another giant in the art world.
Rembrandt van Rijn, renowned for his use of light and shadow, made significant contributions during the Baroque period.
Vincent Van Gogh, with his expressive style showcased in “Starry Night,” and Claude Monet, with his impressionist “Water Lilies,” revolutionized 19th-century art.
Pablo Picasso, a pioneer of Cubism, is remembered for “Guernica,” while Salvador Dalí is notable for his Surrealist works.
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