Famous quotes by Painters

"I learned early about the misery and dangers of life, and about the afterlife, about the external punishment which awaited the children of sin in Hell"

"By painting colors and lines and forms seen in quickened mood I was seeking to make this mood vibrate as a phonograph does. This was the origin of the paintings in The Frieze of Life"

"One can easily tell that the creator of the paintings in the Sistine Chapel was above all a sculptor"

"Nature is not only all that is visible to the eye... it also includes the inner pictures of the soul"

"I painted the picture, and in the colors the rhythm of the music quivers. I painted the colors I saw"

"To die is as if one's eyes had been put out and one cannot see anything any more. Perhaps it is like being shut in a cellar. One is abandoned by all. They have slammed the door and are gone. One does not see anything and notices only the damp smell of putrefaction"

"This kind of painting with its large frames is a bourgeois drawing-room art. It is an art dealer's art-and that came in after the civil wars following the French Revolution"

"Oil-painting is a developed technique. Why go backwards?"

"I should have considered it wrong to have finished the Frieze before the room for its accommodation and the funds for its completion were available"

"I find it difficult to imagine an afterlife, such as Christians, or at any rate many religious people, conceive it, believing that the conversations with relatives and friends interrupted here on earth will be continued in the hereafter"

"Sickness, insanity and death were the angels that surrounded my cradle and they have followed me throughout my life"

"The wide, open expanses of the Norwegian landscape have always fascinated me, and I have tried to capture their unique beauty and the sense of space they evoke"

"I have always sought to create a kind of painting that is free of all the unnecessary details, to make it as simple and monumental as possible, and to express the emotions that the landscapes have given me"

"You cannot sit down and write about your own paintings. You have to paint them. That's the only way to express what you really feel"

"I am a kitsch painter. It means that I am working on human reactions, and I have found out that I am not alone"

"The only thing I can say to young painters is that they should just continue painting no matter what. Because it's not about success or money. It's about following the path you believe in"