If you could say it in words, there wo... - Edward Hopper - Quotes.Pub

If you could say it in words, there would be no reason to paint.

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Edward Hopper Quotes

If the technical innovations of the Impressionists led merely to a more accurate representation of nature, it was perhaps of not much value in enlarging their powers of expression.

I believe that the great painters with their intellect as master have attempted to force this unwilling medium of paint and canvas into a record of their emotions.

It’s to paint directly on the canvas without any funny business, as it were, and I use almost pure turpentine to start with, adding oil as I go along until the medium becomes pure oil. I use as little oil as I can possibly help, and that’s my method.

Methods are transient: personality is enduring.

If I had the energy, I would have done it all over the county.

In its most limited sense, modern, art would seem to concern itself only with the technical innovations of the period.

I have tried to present my sensations in what is the most congenial and impressive form possible to me.

If the picture needs varnishing later, I allow a restorer to do that, if there’s any restoring necessary.

The trend in some of the contemporary movements in art, but by no means all, seems to deny this ideal and to me appears to lead to a purely decorative conception of painting.

The question of the value of nationality in art is perhaps unsolvable.

I trust Winsor and Newton and I paint directly upon it.

I find in working always the disturbing intrusion of elements not a part of my most interested vision, and the inevitable obliteration and replacement of this vision by the work itself as it proceeds.

I once got a little camera to use for details of architecture and so forth but the photo was always so different from the perspective the eye gives, I gave it up.

Painting will have to deal more fully and less obliquely with life and nature’s phenomena before it can again become great.

After all, we are not French and never can be, and any attempt to be so is to deny our inheritance and to try to impose upon ourselves a character that can be nothing but a veneer upon the surface.

I find linseed oil and white lead the most satisfactory mediums.

The only real influence I’ve ever had was myself.

I use a retouching varnish which is made in France, Libert, and that’s all the varnish I use.

The only quality that endures in art is a personal vision of the world. Methods are transient: personality is enduring.

There is a sort of elation about sunlight on the upper part of a house.

To me the most important thing is the sense of going on. You know how beautiful things are when you’re traveling.

So many people say painting is fun. I don’t find it fun at all. It’s hard work for me.

Fun Quotes

When I don’t feel in the mood for painting I go to the movies for a week or more. I go on a regular movie binge!

Yes, linseed oil. I used to use poppy oil, but I have heard that poppy oil is given to cracking pigment too, so I use it no longer.

In general it can be said that a nation’s art is greatest when it most reflects the character of its people.

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