Marianne Elliott Quotes

Being in the studio, it's more of a controlled environment, where you can be Salvador Dali and sit back and look at the painting. And you can go, 'Ah, you know what? Maybe a little bit more red over here...maybe add some blue over here.' You can sit back and look at the painting.

Color possesses me. I don't have to pursue it. It will possess me always, I know it. That is the meaning of this happy hour: Color and I are one. I am a painter.

Within one hour of touching the brush to canvas for the first time, my students have a total, complete painting.

I wanted to be a painter, somewhere between Abstract Expressionism and Pop.

I seldom have my stuff up unless I'm testing it. If I'm worrying about a painting, I put it up and see if I detest it quickly or slowly. Otherwise I have things by other artists.

I love to create, and to me, the ultimate freedom of expression is a blank canvas or a block of clay to capture whatever emotions your imagination gives it.

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.

My best efforts were some modern things that looked like very lousy Matisses. Thank God I had the sense to realize they were lousy, and leave Paris.

And all of this, all these physical aspects of painting at that time excited me very much. You could do a picture in just black and white. I mean all the things, whether you're soliciting permission or not, do give you permission.

We're all going about trying to make beauty in the world and trying to make order out of chaos. And that's what art is.

The task of art today is to bring chaos into order.

My process is really quite organic, and starting a painting is one of the best parts for me. I always start in quite a loose and free way. I often put down one ground colour to begin with and then play off that.

The musician writes for the orchestra what his inner voice sings to him; the painter rarely relies without disadvantage solely upon the images which his inner eye presents to him; nature gives him his forms, study governs his combinations of them.

There is only one true thing: instantly paint what you see. When you've got it, you've got it. When you haven't, you begin again. All the rest is humbug.

I decided that what I really wanted to do was go off and paint.

Painting is the most magical of mediums. The transcendence is truly amazing to me every time I go to a museum and I see how somebody figured another way to rub colored dirt on a flat surface and make space where there is no space or make you think of a life experience.

What happened on 'Mr. & Mrs. Smith,' I was given a big budget and given too many choices, and I made a lot of mistakes and missteps early on until I squandered all that extra money. But then, once my back was up against the wall, I made what I consider a really good movie.

The starting point of a picture for any painter is a matter of colors and form...I believe that the poetry of art - if that is what one may call it - is a matter of animating these forms and colors.

As an artist, you have the job of working out whatever is given you to work out.

All I care about these days is painting — photography has never been more than a way into painting, a sort of instant drawing.

I come alive when I'm painting. I like to work in oils and acrylics, and the full sensory engagement and self-expression is very stimulating to me.

A great artist has to be ready to fail.

Then you learn about composition, you learn about old masters, you form certain ideas about structure. But the inhuman activity of trying to make some kind of jump or leap, where , the painting is always saying, 'What do you want from me? I can only be a painting.' You have to go from part to part, but you shouldn't see yourself go from part to part, that's the whole point.

I look at a nude. There are myriads of tiny tints. I must find the ones that will make the flesh on my canvas live and quiver.