Frank Stella Quotes

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

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

A painting that is well composed is half finished.

I've always been a creative person, and I'd always wanted to paint, so I went to art school and began painting and sculpting.

I was a fine arts major in college, and a painter for many years. And I found that, like writing, art is very similar.

Painting is easy when you don't know how, but very difficult when you do.

I wanted to learn how to paint rather than just doing black-and-white work.

A great painting is a great painting.

Nature engenders the science of painting.

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

If you think about art, if you look at Rembrandt and Vermeer and Caravaggio, if you look at Turner and Constable and all the Impressionists and the Hudson River School, there's a tradition of light in art, especially painting.

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

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

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

I don't think you can lightly paint a picture. It's an activity I take very seriously.

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

Painting is a coalescing of experience.

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.

And since geometry is the right foundation of all painting, I have decided to teach its rudiments and principles to all youngsters eager for art.

My painting does not come from the easel.

I have wanted to be a fine artist painter, and I reached the point in art schools were I'd like to understand more about images and how images communicate information to people. And I was not getting very far in that from my professors.

Real painters understand with a brush in their hand.

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.

I had had no art training.

I love visual art. I painted for many years when I was younger. I have studied modern/contemporary Indian art a bit and am very impressed with the talent in India.