Ryuichi Sakamoto Quotes

When I'm painting the picture, I'm really painting a picture. I may have a flat-footed technique, or something like that, but still, to me, the thrill, or the meat of the thing, is the actual painting. I don't get any thrill out of laying it out.

My painting does not come from the easel.

In a painting, you can't make out whether the artist painted the left eye before the right eye. In Chinese calligraphy, you can see the progression of the artist's stroke.

Painting is seen as picture making, the making of an art object, something that can stand on its own.

If I was painting a picture, I wouldn't want to take a picture of a single paint stroke. I'd rather show people what it looks like when it's done.

A painting is finished when the subject comes back, when what has caused the painting to be made comes back as an object.

One learns about painting by looking at and imitating other painters.

I'm like the painter with his nose to the canvas, fussing over details. Gazing from a distance, the reader sees the big picture.

When you make a painting, even abstract, there is always a sort of necessary filling-in.

It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess. Otherwise there is pure harmony, an easy give and take, and the painting comes out well.

Real painters understand with a brush in their hand.

Well, I have a very simple method of painting.

A painting of a person can be descriptive, but for me it's about all the things that make up a picture - the feelings, the brushstrokes - more than describing somebody. People latch on to the personalities when they talk about my work and forget the other parts.

A photographer must choose a palette as painters choose theirs.

A painting that is well composed is half finished.

There is nothing that special to see when looking at me. I'm a painter who paints day in day out, from morning till evening - figure pictures and landscapes, more rarely portraits.

I kind of do the drawing with the painting in mind, but it's very hard to guess at a size or a color and all the colors around it and what it will really look like.

If you're going to paint extremely, you need a big piece of canvas.

The messages that my work might contain, the verbal aspects, the use of words, certainly I never mean for it to be more than - shall we say? - fifty percent of the total, and sometimes my active interest is much less than that. It is the formal aspect of my painting which fascinates me most.

For painting, I like strong lines, powerful pieces.

A good painting is a lot like a good joke: you need to know when to stop, too many 'punchlines and you will have gone too far.

Painting is damned difficult - you always think you've got it, but you haven't.

I use printers to make prints of the images that I am creating. And I try to have that surface kind of replicated in the painting.

Things develop in front of my camera, and then I will try to do the best out of it. I am close, but in most of the scenes, I am trying not to be seen. I think that's the trick. I think it starts in your heart, goes to the head, and the head puts it into the finger.

I don't think you can lightly paint a picture. It's an activity I take very seriously.