Edgar Degas Quotes

To paint is the most terrific thing that there is, but to do it well is very difficult.

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

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

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

When I paint, some things come out, and I don't know. Maybe it's because I have such talent as a painter.

A painting that is well composed is half finished.

Nature engenders the science of painting.

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

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

You cannot possibly invent painting all by yourself.

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.

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

I know how to paint... In a way there is a boredom there because a lot of the magic is gone.

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.

Stained glass is unique from the outside, but as a painting insider, I know that oil painting's all about light. And it's about the depiction of light, the way that it bounces off different types of skin, different landscapes. The mastery of that light is the obsession of most of my painter friends.

Whether it's a computer or a pen drawing, design is about drawing shapes and making physical things.

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.

What do you see when you look at a representational painting? Most of the time, the first thing I see is a flat piece of canvas covered with colored patterns.

My painting does not come from the easel.

Good painting is the kind that looks like sculpture.

I always say Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is my biggest influence. But for painters, I like many, many painters, but I love Francis Bacon the most, and Edward Hopper.