Maxfield Parrish Quotes

The chief concern of the French Impressionists was the discovery of balance between light and dark.

Design and color are not distinct and separate. As one paints, one draws. The more the colors harmonize, the more the design takes form. When color is at it's richest, form is at its fullest.

In teaching color, you teach people how to look something and see the tone in it and break it down to be able to paint it and reproduce that color. But then, I'm psychedelic, so I look at color differently. I like colors that are in contrast with one another, so that they flicker back and forth.

Any ground subtracts its own hue from the colors which it carries and therefore influences.

A colour is a physical object as soon as we consider its dependence, for instance, upon its luminous source, upon other colours, upon temperatures, upon spaces, and so forth.

Gray goes with gold. Gray goes with all colors. I've done gray-and-red paintings, and gray and orange go so well together. It takes a long time to make gray because gray has a little bit of color in it.

Simultaneous contrast is not just a curious optical phenomenon - it is the very heart of painting.

In the case of composite colour, an infinity of systems must be obtained for maxima infinitely slight and with an infinity of interval values separating them - that is to say, the whole thickness of the sensitive layer is occupied in continuous manner by these maxima.

Above all, keep your colors fresh!

It is the brushwork of the right value and color which should produce the drawing.

Not only can color, which is under fixed laws, be taught like music, but it is easier to learn than drawing, whose elaborate principles cannot be taught.

Art is a creation of a higher order than a copy of nature which is governed by chance.... By the elimination of all muddy colors, by the exclusive use of optical mixture of pure colors, by a methodical divisionism and a strict observation of the scientific theory of colors, the neo-impressionists insures a maximum of luminosity, of color intensity, and of harmony- a result that has never yet been obtained.

Color is crucial in painting, but it is very hard to talk about.

I like to have the screen full of color, twenty colors on the screen at once, fifty colors. There are no dominants despite what people have said.

When you first commence painting everything is a muddle. Even the commonest colors seem to have the devil in them.

Colors are the deeds/ and sufferings of light.

At one side of the palette there is white, at the other black; and neither is ever used neat.

I think white is the most wonderful color of all, because within it one can find every color of the rainbow.

All painting worth its name, unless one is talking about black and white, must include the idea of color as one of its necessary supports, in the same way that it includes chiaroscuro, proportion, and perspective.

I learned from Seurat this important thing about colour and light, that 'a light' can be built from colour. I learned a great deal about interaction, that 'a blue' in different parts will play all sorts of different roles.

All my life I've pursued the perfect red.

Since light is best expressed through differences in color quality, color should not be handled as a tonal gradation, to produce the effect of light.

Color cannot stand alone.

Color was the palette of commercial photography and snapshot photography.

Albert Durer, the famous painter, used to say he had no pleasure in pictures that were painted with many colors, but in those which were painted with a choice simplicity. So it is with me as to sermons.