Shaun Tan Quotes

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.

Most of the power of painting comes through the manipulation of space... but I don't understand that.

Painting is a science, and should be pursued as an inquiry into the laws of nature.

This truth must be recognized as a dogma and assume the validity of an axiom in the general understanding of painting.

Nature engenders the science of painting.

The animation of the canvas is one of the hardest problems of painting.

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.

I'm very interested in the language of photography in relationship to painting.

An illustration is a visual editorial - it's just as nuanced. Everything that goes into it is a call you make: every color, every line weight, every angle.

By making pictures, you learn the many different properties of photography. I use those properties differently than, say, an advertising agency would, but we're both operating in the same reality. A face painted by Picasso occupies the same reality as a portrait by Stieglitz.

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

When I was painting in art school - and I think many painters in the 1980s worked similarly - a finished painting would often be constructed from lots of other paintings underneath. Some of these individual layers of painting were better than others, but that was something that you would often only realise retrospectively.

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

Painting is by nature a luminous language.

I paint landscapes, figuratives. I painted all my life. In fact, I started as a commercial artist.

A great painting is a great painting.

Now, I love painting. I love looking. I love the fact that they don't move. They constantly change with the light. They are sort of patient.

The actual technique, the process of painting flat color and simple geometric edges, all dates from my time here on Coenties Slip.

In painting, you don't have to go through a process of opinion; it speaks directly, and either it works, or it doesn't.

I really like the language of painting.

I love the way painting is so full of illusionistic possibilities.

Painting from life is a completely different monster, which I like. But because I've been painting from photography for so long, I've learned my best moves from photography.

I'm interested in the space between the viewer and the surface of the painting - the forms and the way they work in their surroundings. I'm interested in how they react to a room.

I think a painting should include more experience than simply intended statement.

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