paintings

Art is a harmony parallel with nature

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

I try to apply colors like words that shape poems, like notes that shape music.

The paintings of Francis Bacon to my eye are very beautiful. The paintings of Bosch or Goya are to my eye very beautiful. I've also stood in front of those same paintings with people who've said, 'let's get on to the Botticellis as soon as possible.' I have lingered, of course.

Aryami Bose's home had been closed up for years, inhabited only by books and paintings, but the spectre of thousands of memories imprisoned between its walls still permeated the house.

Colour is a power which directly influences the soul.

. . . there were masses of pictures she had not seen; however, Lily Briscoe reflected, perhaps it was better not to see pictures: they only made one hopelessly discontented with one__ own work.

I do not distinguish between the construction of a book and that of a painting and I always proceed from the simple to the complex." - 1946

There were details like clothing, hair styles and the fragile objects that hardly ever survive for the archaeologist__usical instruments, bows and arrows, and body ornaments depicted as they were worn. _ No amounts of stone and bone could yield the kinds of information that the paintings gave so freely.

Why not fall in love with an artist? Otherwise there are no letters, pictures, paintings and songs for you when you wake up.

The wall between writing and painting is just good grammar. Moderation in moderation. Fun is scary with a happy ending. Just love. If love doesn__ transform that which annoys you, it will be easier to tolerate.

We don't see the world as a botanist who is at the same time an architect, a physician, a geologist, and a ship's captain. Recognizing isn't at all like seeing; the two often don't even agree...

I don't want these. They're mud and they've got no color. Or at least the color is different from what I'm used to. Take any American city, in autumn, or in winter, when the light makes the colors dance and flow, and look at it from a distant hill or from a boat in the bay or on the river, and you will see in any section of the view far better paintings than in this lentil soup that you people have to pedigree in order to love. I may be a thief, but I know color when I see it in the flash of heaven or in the Devil's opposing tricks, and I know mud. Mr. Knoedler, you needn't worry about your paintings anymore. I'm not going to steal them. I don't like them.Sincerely yours, P. Soames

Ah, merciless Love, is there any length to which you cannot force the human heart to go?

There is nothing to be found in human eyes, and that is their terrifying and dolorous enigma, their abominable and delusive charm. There is nothing but that which we put there ourselves. That is why honest gazes are only to be found in portraits.The faded and weary eyes of martyrs, expressions tortured by ecstasy, imploring and suffering eyes, some resigned, others desperate... the gazes of saints, mendicants and princesses in exile, with pardoning smiles... the gazes of the possessed, the chosen and the hysterical... and sometimes of little girls, the eyes of Ophelia and Canidia, the eyes of virgins and witches... as you live in the museums, what eternal life, dolorous and intense, shines out of you! Like precious stones enshrined between the painted eyelids of masterpieces, you disturb us across time and across space, receivers of the dream which created you!You have souls, but they are those of the artists who wished you into being, and I am delivered to despair and mortification because I have drunk the draught of poison congealed in the irises of your eyes.The eyes of portraits ought to be plucked out.