105 Best Painting Quotes To inspire You

In the simplest terms, painting can be defined as an orderly assembly of colors on a solid medium.

Did you know that there are different forms of painting? There is watercolor painting, oil painting, acrylic painting, fresco painting, gouache, and more.

Painting is a form of artistic expression that has been known to be practiced by mankind since the dawn of civilization. The world has seen some phenomenal painters and artists, some of whom are Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Frida Kahlo, and Michelangelo, to name a few, while the most famous must be Leonardo da Vinci, responsible for the 'Mona Lisa'. While the true definition of painting is subject to interpretation, in the end, it is the epitome of an artist's emotions and creativity translated into a pattern of strokes and colors.

If you like what you read, check out rainbow quotes and [Picasso quotes].

If you're looking for art quotes, these iconic painting quotes are something you'll love!

1. “If the world really looks like that I will paint no more!”

- Claude Monet.

2. “I started painting as a hobby when I was little. I didn't know I had any talent. I believe talent is just a pursued interest.”

- Bob Ross.

3. "Painting is the most beautiful of all arts."

- Paul Gauguin.

4. "I paint flowers so they will not die."

- Frida Kahlo.

5. “I think each of us, sometime in our life, has wanted to paint a picture.”

- Bob Ross.

6. “I would like to paint the way a bird sings.”

- Claude Monet.

7. "I believe, I believe every day is a good day when you paint."

- Bob Ross.

8. "It doesn't matter how the paint is put on, as long as something is said."

- Jackson Pollock.

9. "I decided that if I could paint that flower in a huge scale, you could not ignore its beauty."

- Georgia O' Keeffe.

10. "Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is."

- Jackson Pollock.

11. "I don't paint dreams or nightmares, I paint my own reality."

- Frida Kahlo.

12. "Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is a painting that speaks."

- Plutarch.

13. "The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can clarify in paint."

- Georgia O' Keeffe.

14. "I have no fears about making changes, destroying the image... because the painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through."

- Jackson Pollock.

15. “Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.”

- Pablo Picasso.

16. "A hill or tree cannot make a good painting just because it is a hill or tree. It is lines and colors put together so that they may say something."

- Georgia O' Keeffe.

17. “There is something particularly fascinating about seeing places you know in a piece of art - be that in a film, or a photograph, or a painting.”

- Sara Sheridan.

18. “I wanted to paint a picture someday that people would stand before and forget that it was made of paint.”

- O. Henry.

19. “Moonlight is sculpture; sunlight is painting.”

- Nathaniel Hawthorne.

20. “A painting requires a little mystery, some vagueness, and some fantasy. When you always make your meaning perfectly plain you end up boring people.”

- Edgar Degas.

21. "There is something beautiful about a blank canvas, the nothingness of the beginning that is so simple and breathtakingly pure. It’s the paint that changes its meaning and the hand that creates the story."

- Piper Payne.

22. "Painting something that defies the law of the land and the law of gravity at the same time is ideal."

- Banksy.

23. “A fine work of art - music, dance, painting, story - has the power to silence the chatter in the mind and lift us to another place.”

- Robert McKee.

24. “Painting is the silence of thought and the music of sight.”

- Orhan Pamuk.

25. “There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted.”

- Henri Matisse.

26. “If you understand a painting beforehand, you might as well not paint it.”

- Salvador Dalí.

27. “Painting is the grandchild of nature. It is related to God.”

- Rembrandt van Rijn.

28. “Painting is an illusion, a piece of magic, so what you see is not what you see.”

- Philip Guston.

These famous artist quotes are as pleasing as their breathtaking works of art.

29. “I love to look at art, I love to look at paintings, and I almost feel like the experience isn’t complete until I’ve made something of my own.”

- Cecily Brown.

30. “I paint the spirit and soul of what I see.”

- Brian Froud.

31. "The artist must train not only his eye but also his soul."

- Wassily Kandinsky.

32. “An artist must have his measuring tools not in the hand, but in the eye.”

- Michelangelo.

33. "The world today doesn't make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do? "

- Pablo Picasso.

34. “What keeps my heart awake is colorful silence.”

- Claude Monet.

35. "I paint objects as I think them not as I see them."

- Pablo Picasso.

36. "If you could say it in words there would be no reason to paint."

- Edward Hopper.

37. “I'm not performing miracles, I'm using up and wasting a lot of paint.”

- Claude Monet.

38. "The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls."

- Pablo Picasso.

39. "I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for."

- Georgia O' Keeffe.

40. “A painted surface is a real, living form.”

- Kazimir Severinovich Malevich.

41. "Abstract art should be enjoyed just as music is enjoyed – after a while, you may like it or you may not."

- Jackson Pollock.

42. “Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love.”

- Claude Monet.

43. “Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun. ”

- Pablo Picasso.

44. “Without atmosphere a painting is nothing.”

- Rembrandt.

45. “What art is, in reality, is this missing link, not the links which exist. It’s not what you see that is art; art is the gap.”

- Marcel Duchamp.

46. “Every morning when I wake up, I experience an exquisite joy —the joy of being Salvador Dalí— and I ask myself in rapture: What wonderful things is this Salvador Dalí going to accomplish today?”

- Salvador Dalí.

47. "All you need to paint is a few tools, a little instruction, and a vision in your mind."

- Bob Ross.

48. “The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity.”

- Alberto Giacometti.

If you need a reason to paint, here are some painter quotes and art quotes to motivate you and bring out the artist in you.

49. "Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon."

- Pablo Picasso.

50. "Treat a work of art like a prince. Let it speak to you first."

- Arthur Schopenhauer.

51. "The world always seems brighter when you've just made something that wasn't there before."

- Neil Gaiman.

52. “In the mind of every artist there is a masterpiece.”

- Kai Greene.

53. "Every artist was first an amateur."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson.

54. “You might as well ask an artist to explain his art, or ask a poet to explain his poem. It defeats the purpose. The meaning is only clear thorough the search.”

- Rick Riordan.

55. "Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter."

- Oscar Wilde.

56. "Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures."

- Henry Ward Beecher.

57. "Art is unquestionably one of the purest and highest elements in human happiness. It trains the mind through the eye, and the eye through the mind."

- John Lubbock.

58. "To my mind a picture should be something pleasant, cheerful and pretty. There are too many unpleasant things in life as it is without creating still more of them."

- Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

59. "Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art."

- William Somerset Maugham.

60. "A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art."

- Paul Cezanne.

61. "Art is a line around your thoughts."

- Gustav Klimt.

62. “Artistic talent is a gift from God and whoever discovers it in himself has a certain obligation: to know that he cannot waste this talent, but must develop it.”

- Pope John Paul II.

63. "Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow."

- Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

64. “Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.”

- Oscar Wilde.

65. “You use a glass mirror to see your face; works of art to see your soul.”

- George Bernard Shaw.

66. “Art and love are the same thing: It’s the process of seeing yourself in things that are not you.”

- Chuck Klosterman.

67. “The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.”

- Aristotle.

68. “A blank canvas…has unlimited possibilities.”

- Stephanie Perkins.

69. “The discipline of creation, be it to paint, compose, write, is an effort towards wholeness.”

- Madeleine L'Engle.

70. “The position of the artist is humble. He is essentially a channel.”

- Piet Mondrian.

71. “An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.”

- James McNeill Whistler.

72. “The true use of art is, first, to cultivate the artist’s own spiritual nature.”

- George Inness.

73. “Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist.”

-  René Magritte.

74. “Painting must be fertile. It must give birth to a world… it must fertilize the imagination.”

- Joan Miró.

75. “To be an artist is to believe in life.”

- Henry Moore.

76. “A simple line painted with the brush can lead to freedom and happiness.”

- Joan Miró.

77. “Art is what you can get away with.”

- Andy Warhol.

78. “It is only after years of preparation that the young artist should touch color – not color used descriptively, that is, but as a means of personal expression.”

- Henri Matisse.

Let your creativity flow with these encouraging words.

79. "Creativity is not the finding of a thing, but the making something out of it after it is found."

- James Russell Lowell.

80. "An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail."

- Edwin Land.

81. "Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties."

- Erich Fromm.

82. "The comfort zone is the great enemy to creativity."

- Dan Stevens.

83. “Draw the art you want to see, start the business you want to run, play the music you want to hear, write the books you want to read, build the products you want to use – do the work you want to see done.”

- Austin Kleon.

84. “The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

- Sylvia Plath.

85. “One day you will wake up and there won’t be any more time to do the things you’ve always wanted. Do it now.”

- Paulo Coelho.

86. “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.”

- Arthur Ashe.

87. "You can't use up creativity. The more you use the more you have."

- Maya Angelou.

88. "Creativity doesn't wait for that perfect moment. It fashions its own perfect moments out of ordinary ones."

- Bruce Garrabrandt.

Here are some witty painting quotes for a good laugh!

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

- Edgar Degas.

90. “If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all.”

- Michelangelo.

91. "If you are not skillful enough to sketch a man jumping out of a window in the time it takes him to fall from the fourth story to the ground, you will never be able to produce great works."

- Eugène Delacroix.

92. “The canvas has an idiotic stare and mesmerizes some painters so much that they turn into idiots themselves.”

- Vincent van Gogh.

93. “A painting is worth a thousand confused art-gallery visitors.”

- Ljupka Cvetanova.

94. “I say that good painters imitated nature; but that bad ones vomited it.”

- Miguel De Cervantes.

Here is a compilation of quotes from the legendary post-impressionist artist Van Gogh.

95. "Art is to console those who are broken by life."

- Vincent Van Gogh.

96. "If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced."

- Vincent Van Gogh.

97. “And then, I have nature and art and poetry, and if that is not enough, what is enough?”

- Vincent Van Gogh.

98. "I feel that there’s nothing more genuinely artistic than to love people."

- Vincent Van Gogh.

99. “I dream my painting and I paint my dream.”

- Vincent Van Gogh.

100. “One must spoil as many canvases as one succeeds with.”

- Vincent Van Gogh.

Here are some classic art quotes from the esteemed Renaissance artist and polymath.

101. “A painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light.”

- Leonardo da Vinci.

102. “Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.”

- Leonardo da Vinci.

103. “The painter who draws merely by practice and by eye, without any reason, is like a mirror which copies every thing placed in front of it without being conscious of their existence.”

- Leonardo da Vinci.

104. “The mind of the painter must resemble a mirror, which always takes the color of the object it reflects and is completely occupied by the images of as many objects as are in front of it.”

- Leonardo da Vinci.

105. “Painting is concerned with all the 10 attributes of sight; which are: Darkness, Light, Solidity, and Colour, Form and Position, Distance and Propinquity, Motion and Rest.”

- Leonardo da Vinci.

Here at Kidadl, we have carefully created lots of interesting family-friendly quotes for everyone to enjoy! If you liked our suggestions for painting quotes then why not take a look at Michelangelo quotes, or Matisse quotes.