Marilyn French Quotes

A distinction is made between artists who work directly from nature and those who work purely from imagination. Neither if these methods should be preferred to the exclusion of the other. Often both are used in turn by the same man.

If I were of the trade, I should naturalize art as much as they "artialize" nature.

The important thing is to remember what most impressed you and to put it on canvas as fast as possible.

All art is but imitation of nature.

Art is a harmony parallel with nature.

I looked at Rembrandt and Superman, Matisse and Bugs Bunny, and began to make my own pictures.

Art, to me, is the interpretation of the impression which nature makes upon the eye and brain.

Art is the child of Nature; yes, her darling child, in whom we trace the features of the mother's face, her aspect and her attitude.

Many artists and scholars have pointed out that ultimately art depends on human nature.

Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest.

Art is the objectification of feeling, and the subjectification of nature.

The counterfeit and counterpart of Nature is reproduced in art.

That's what art is. You don't make up stories. You live your life.

Without artists, the order which we find in nature, and which is only an effect of art, would at once vanish.

O thou sculptor, painter, poet! Take this lesson to thy heart: That is best which lieth nearest; Shape from that thy work of art.

For all the years I'd spent talking about pictures, the truth was that I had no idea how to draw or what it felt like to do it. I would mistrust a poetry critic who couldn't produce a rhyming couplet. Could one write about art without knowing how to draw?

Now Art, used collectively for painting, sculpture, architecture and music, is the mediatress between, and reconciler of, nature and man. It is, therefore, the power of humanizing nature, of infusing the thoughts and passions of man into everything which is the object of his contemplation.

Art is the child of nature in whom we trace the features of the mothers face.

When you think of painting as painting it is rather absurd. The real world is before us - glorious sunlight and activity and fresh air, and high speed motor cars and television, all the animation - a world apart from a little square of canvas that you smear paint on.

Nature's purpose in relation to the visual arts is to provide stimulus not imitation. From its ceaseless urge to create springs all Life - all movement and rhythm - time and light, color and mood - in short, all reality in Form and Thought.

The sculptor does not work for the anatomist, but for the common observer of life and nature.

An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them.

I have a studio in the country - in the woods - but my paintings look more real to me than what is outdoors. You walk outside; the rocks are inert; even the clouds are inert. It makes me feel a little better. But I do have a faith that it is possible to make a living thing, not a diagram of what I have been thinking: to posit with paint something living, something that changes each day.

I wonder if the artist ever lives his life--he is so busy recreating it.

All paintings start out of a mood, out of a relationship with things or people, out of a complete visual impression. To call this expression abstract seems to me often to confuse the issue. Abstract means literally to draw from or separate. In this sense every artist is abstract . . . a realistic or non-objective approach makes no difference. The result is what counts.