Intuitive Painting Quotes

I paint my own reality. The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to, and I paint whatever passes through my head without any other consideration.

Cover the canvas at the first go, and then work on till you see nothing more to add ... Don't proceed according to rules and principles, but paint what you observe and feel. Paint generously and unhesitatingly, for it is best not to lose the first impression.

I paint what cannot be photographed, that which comes from the imagination or from dreams, or from an unconscious drive.

I'm very representational some of the time, and a little all of the time. But when you're painting out of your unconscious, figures are bound to emerge.

Kenneth Hari is a true artist and in my opinion a psychic. When he is painting you, he feels your heart and soul.

I do not plan any painting, but begin with layers of textures and colors. As I layer the colors, something is suggested to me from within, and that is how it evolves.

My instinct about painting says, 'if you don't think about it, it's right.' As soon as you have to decide and choose, it's wrong. And the more you decide about, the more wrong it gets.

When I am in my painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing.

When I'm painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. It's only after a get acquainted period that I see what I've been about. I've no fears about making changes for the painting has a life of its own.

I never know what I'm going to put on the canvas. The canvas paints itself. I'm just the middleman.

My thing is about following the accidental, more than trying to paint an accurate bowl of apples. I enjoy most following the paint. It leads me somewhere else. I think I enjoy just letting the magic unfold and letting the spirit of the paint tell me where we're going.

When I left the Royal College, I decided I would only make paintings that I would want to look at myself, that felt close to my life.

I don't work from drawings. I don't make sketches and drawings and color sketches into a final painting.

Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.

There are some people who may not like precision in their art. They may like it to be grittier and more gestural, more of a direct expression in the way that a painter would put his strokes on canvas.

I've heard my work called 'bold' and 'graffiti-like,' but for me it is always instinctual. I start with a shape or a colour and go from there.

When I paint from a photograph, conscious thinking is eliminated. I don't know what I am doing. My work is far closer to the Informel than to any kind of 'realism'. The photograph has an abstraction of its own, which is not easy to see through.

You can only paint through your experience and sub-consciousness.

Part of why I like watercolor is that mistakes are visible, and you can't really repair much. It has to look easy. When it comes out, it looks easy, but to get to that point takes a lot of doing.

As opposed to putting too much confidence in myself, or in an image or a scene or a set of brushes, I really want to allow the oil paint to perform, to show me the things that it wants to do, beyond my imagination.

I used to change things in my early paintings to get the nuance or feeling I wanted, but now I plan everything in my head before I do it.

The painter must give a completely free rein to any feeling or sensations he may have and reject nothing to which he is naturally drawn.

I'm a very strange painter. I don't wake up one day and say, 'God, isn't this a fantastic day, I'd better get out and paint!' I think my father's more that way, because he's very fast.

People say, 'Why don't you just paint with paintbrushes?' I say that I feel more connected to my painting using my skin. It's very tribal in a way - savage!

There is an exercise I teach at colleges: Get yourself a canvas and a bunch of acrylics and go into a very dimly lighted room. Dip a brush into one of the colors, slap it on the canvas, don't look, close your eyes, make a painting, don't look, turn the lights on and see what you've got. I think this releases people from the editor in their life that's always standing over their shoulder saying, "Oh, you don't have any talent; who do you think you are?"