Samuel Morse Quotes

I'm very envious of the few artists who are any good and still do portraits.

Poetry is an art, the easiest to dabble in, but the hardest to reach true excellence.

We don't really want to think that the artist is only very skilled, that he has merely devoted his life to perfecting a certain set of intelligible skills.

Imagination without skill gives us contemporary art.

If someone took the finest marble and knew how to shape it artfully: Prometheus' material was lowly clay, but his statues walked.

Every good piece of art... involves first essentially the evidence of human skill, and the formation of an actually beautiful thing by it.

Many have genius, but, wanting art, are forever dumb. The two must go together to form the great poet, painter, or sculptor.

There is a satisfactory and available power in every one to learn drawing if he wishes, just as nearly all persons have the power of learning French, Latin or arithmetic, in a decent and useful degree.

In a sense I'm glad that I've never learned how to paint.

I'm overwhelmed by writers. Most people aren't impressed by writers, but if you can draw a cartoon or a picture, they think you're magic.

I was very interested in being a painter. I had facility, I had talent, and I loved painting and printmaking, and I was quite serious about it.

I still come closest to success with drawing.

Draughtsmen may be made, but colourists are born.

You may be perfect in playing the piano, and not be creative; you may play the piano most brilliantly, and not be a musician. You may be able to handle color, to put paint on canvas most cleverly, and not be a creative painter. You may create a face, an image out of a stone, because you have learned the technique, and not be a master creator. Creation comes first, not technique.

If art is the bridge between what you see in your mind and what the world sees, then skill is how you build that bridge.

The men liked to put me down as the best woman painter. I think I'm one of the best painters.

I love Derrick Brown for the surprise of one word waking up next to another. One moment tender, funny or romantic, the next, visceral, ironic and relevatory-here is the full chaos of life. An amazing talent.

Only talent interests me in paintings and books. Not general ideas, but the individual contribution.

Technical Expertise is composed of all the little and large bits of technique known to the skilled painter, musician, actor, any artist. He adds these things together in his basic presentation. He knows what he is doing. And how to do it. And then to his he adds his message.

Let whoever may have attained to so much as to have the power of drawing know that he holds a great treasure.

I think people face that in any artistic field, this idea of: oh, I could do that, if I had the time.

As children, we come into the world with a natural desire to both speak and draw. Society makes sure that we learn language properly, right from the beginning, but art is treated as a gift of innate genius, something we either have or don't.

He best can paint them who shall feel them most.

I love to paint. It's more of a hobby, but people love the paintings so much that I end up selling whatever I paint.

It's no easy matter to paint a background. I venture to say that the old painters had more difficulty with their grounds than with their figures. You know the story of Vandyke brought to Rubens with this recommendation: 'He already knows how to paint a background.' 'That is more than I can do!' was the reply.