Quotes & Sayings About Blank Canvas

I don't go into the studio with the idea of 'saying' something. What I do is face the blank canvas and put a few arbitrary marks on it that start me on some sort of dialogue. — Richard Diebenkorn

White. A blank page or canvas. So many possibilities. — Stephen Sondheim

In a way, the blank canvas ... represents the infinity of trying to use color to express emotions - to assign a linguistic function to color. — Guido Molinari

People know that I always do my hair and makeup, but I also love doing crafts. I love getting a blank canvas and painting something. — Maddie Ziegler

TODAY your life is a blank canvas, it's up to you what to paint — Steven Aitchison

As the philosopher Gilles Deleuze put it, no painter ever stands before a completely blank canvas, no author ever sits before a blank page. In fact, the surface confronting the modern artist is full of inherited images that must first be cleared from the imagination before one can begin to create one's own. — Marie Luise Knott

The key role of entrepreneurs, like the most crucial role of scientists, is not to fill in the gaps in an existing market or theory, but to generate entirely new markets or theories ... They stand before a canvas as empty as any painter's; a page as blank as any poet's. — George Gilder

When a person speculates about my identity, it reveals something about their own background and preferences. If the canvas is blank; the only thing people can see on its surface is themselves. — John Twelve Hawks

Life is a blank canvas, and you need to throw all the paint on it you can. — Danny Kaye

Tomorrow is a blank canvas and you are the artist. — Lamees Alhassar

Don't even open the Prezi canvas until you have a plan ready. This will help ensure you're not overwhelmed or distracted by staring at the blank canvas. — Russell Anderson-Williams

Let's just say, if I weren't a model, I'd be a walking collage. I see my body as a blank canvas that's aching to be decorated; I find it all very fascinating. — Abbey Lee Kershaw

The blank page is the canvas on which a writer paints a story. — Stephanie Ayers

It's so fine and yet so terrible to stand in front of a blank canvas. — Paul Cezanne

It was told in the Bible. A man fell. He bit into knowledge and fell ... How do you fall without falling completely? What do you bring as knowledge to a blank canvas? How do you begin? — Milton Resnick

As a creative person, you want to start with a blank canvas. — Bibhu Mohapatra

Blank walls are a shared canvas and we're all artists. — Carla H. Krueger

There were dozens of pictures similar to the one I had found in the Brooklyn Museum; the same forest, the same moon, the same silence. The moon was always full in these works, and it was always the same: small, perfectly round circle in the middle of the canvas, glowing with the palest white light. After I had looked at five or six of them, they gradually began to separate themselves from their surrounds, and I was no long able to see them as moons. They became holes in the canvas, apertures of whiteness looking out onto another work. Blakelock's eye, perhaps. A blank circle suspended in space, gazing down at things that were no longer there. — Paul Auster

A blank canvas...has unlimited possibilities. — Stephanie Perkins

People speak of the fear of the blank canvas as though it is a temporary hesitation, a trembling moment of self-doubt. For me it was more like being abducted from my bed by a clown, thrust into a circus arena with a wicker chair, and told to tame a pissed-off lion in front of an expectant crowd. — Hannah Kent

If life is a blank canvas and all people are artists, the big challenge we all face may be expressed this way: Will we ultimately produce something approaching a masterpiece, an acceptable but not particularly memorable work of art, or a creation that wouldn't even be purchased at a yard sale? — Mardy Grothe

I'm lucky enough that there is never a blank canvas in front of me ... I have hundreds of projects that I want to do but I am running out of time. — George Lucas

Being idolized and being torn down felt oddly similar. They both made me feel alone.
Friendship and trust should be earned, and when you're famous, people seem to want to give them to you whether you've earned them or not, and it felt dishonest to me. Fame was not real. It was all a projection - fame made me a blank canvas that people projected their love, lust, troubles, self-worth, and desire upon.
Fame and power do not change us, they amplify us. — Jewel

Because eventually, no matter what the circumstances, he would see the real me. Josh is a beautiful, messy, passionate work of art, and I'm ... a blank canvas. There's nothing here to love. — Stephanie Perkins

Make sure that when you look at your plate, it's a beautiful blank canvas to start with, and you want lots of color on there. You want to make sure you have whole grains and protein. It should not be beige in color; it should be green and bright red, and orange and yellow. — Summer Sanders

The blank page is my canvas, give me enough and I'll change the world. — Unknown

Perfect isn't normal, nor is it interesting. I have no features without makeup. I am pale. I have blond lashes. You could just paint my face - it's like a blank canvas. It can be great for what I do. — Amy Adams

The construction industry likes nothing more than a blank canvas onto which they can impose a brand new building, because that way they can make more money. — Jonathan Meades

Myron lay sprawled next to a knee-knockingly gorgeous brunette clad only in a Class-B-felony bikini, a tropical drink sans umbrella in one hand, the aqua clear Caribbean water lapping at his feet, the sand a dazzling white powder, the sky a pure blue that could only be God's blank canvas, the sun a soothing and rich as a Swedish masseur with a snifter of cognac, and he was intensely miserable. — Harlan Coben

Writers are alphabet artists. The blank page becomes their canvas as they paint pictures with words. — Barbara Case Speers

When I have a day off, I won't spend it at a Hollywood party. I'd rather be at home with paints and a blank canvas. — Viggo Mortensen

Start with a blank surface. It doesn't have to be paper or canvas, but I feel it should be white. We call it white because we need a word, but its true name is nothing. Black is the absence of light, but white is the absence of memory, the color of can't remember. — Stephen King

He began by talking about the Christ child as the representative of all children and what it was to be childlike. He was arguing in favour of the need for times of weakness and vulnerability in our lives. An always invincible, strong, resistant humanity would have no room for growth or learning. It would have nothing to do. There would be no test because there could be no failure. Humanity needed its failings in order to understand itself. This was more than a matter of learning from mistakes. It was about acknowledging weakness, denying pride, and beginning any task from a position of openness, aware of the possibility that we often fall short. We must learn from the appearance of the Christ child in the world, as ready for companionship as tribulation, a blank canvas on whose surface life was painted and where depths contained mysteries yet to be understood. 'The — James Runcie

The discovery of useful forms is precious. Once found, they should never be abandoned for trivial reasons. It's easy to imagine today's art instructor cautioning Chopin that the Mazurka thing is getting a little repetitive, that the work is not progressing. Well, true, it may not have been progressing - but that's not the issue. Writing Mazurkas may have been useful only to Chopin - as a vehicle for getting back into the work, and as a place to begin making the next piece. For most artists, making good art depends upon making lots of art, and any device that carries the first brushstroke to the next blank canvas has tangible, practical value. Only — David Bayles

For me, acting is about the art of it and it's about being on a film set and doing your thing, painting a blank canvas. — Shailene Woodley

Tortured Soul 101: The depth of despair one experiences during the creative process (as experienced say, in an abysmally blank page or canvas) is directly proportional to the scope and power of the work that emerges when it breaks. — F.T. McKinstry

My God, are you even real?" she whispered. Holding her gaze, a sad smile lifted his mouth. "I think I am." "You make me feel like I'm in a dream," Emily confessed, wrapping her arms around his neck. "Like I'm sleepwalking and I don't even know it." ... "I'm able to close my eyes and just ... trust you. You're the color on my blank canvas, the light in my dark, the air in my lungs, and I almost let you go. I almost erased us from ever happening. I can't imagine not having you here with me. Please tell me you know how much I love you, Gavin. I need to hear it right now. Please. — Gail McHugh

The Patty Winters Shows were all repeats. Life remained a blank canvas, a cliche, a soap opera. I felt lethal, on the verge of frenzy. My nightly bloodlust overflowed into my days and I had to leave the city. My mask of sanity was a victim of impending slippage. This was bone season for me and I needed a vacation. I needed to go to the Hamptons. — Bret Easton Ellis

I just get excited ... like a painter with a blank canvas. — Kenny Florian

I was blown away by being able to color. Then I started to draw ... bringing a blank white canvas to life was fascinating. — James De La Vega

The Bible, undoubtedly, is a mixed bag. I don't see myself coming back to the Church. I do like the tradition. If you come from a strong culture, you can decide what you agree with and what you don't agree with. If you're given a blank canvas, it's almost harder in life. — Steve Coogan

With this film, 'Need For Speed,' with this, we had a blank canvas to work with. What we had to do was have fast cars, and that's it. — Aaron Paul

A canvas that I have covered is worth more than a blank canvas. My pretensions go no further; that is my right to paint, my reason for painting. — Irving Stone

Give me a blank canvas, and I will give you the world. — Shauna Scheets

Your life is your artwork and you are to paint life as a beautiful struggle. With your brush, paint the colors of joy in vibrant shades of red. Color the sky a baby blue, a color as free as your heart. With rich, earthy tones shade the valleys that run deep into the ground where heaven meets hell. Life is as chaotic as the color black, a blend of all colors, and this makes life a beautiful struggle. Be grateful for the green that makes up the beautiful canvas, for nature has given you everything that you need to be happy. Most of all, don't ever feel the need to fill the entire canvas with paint, for the places left blank are the most honest expressions of who you are. — Forrest Curran

I was a blank canvas, no thoughts, no emotions, no needs or desires, just a square of white floating through a loud, chaotic world, and life would paint me with color and substance, smear and spread and colorize me. — Jasinda Wilder

It seems strange that some artists fear a blank canvas, when it has been a major contributory factor to great paintings. — David Luiz

In the other room Rateau was looking at the canvas, completely blank, in the center of which Jonas had merely written in very small letters a word that could be made out, but without any certainty as to whether it should be read solitary or solidary. — Albert Camus

You know, Hitler wanted to be an artist. At eighteen he took his inheritance, seven hundred kronen, and moved to Vienna to live and study ... Ever see one of his paintings? Neither have I. Resistance beat him. Call it overstatement but I'll say it anyway: it was easier for Hitler to start World War II than it was for him to face a blank square of canvas. — Steven Pressfield

Doing things like playing music, something that's so natural and basic to human function, running around in nature, eating delicious food. These things are intrinsic in basic, primordial to human beings, so that's sort of a way to return to a blank canvas, allowing my true personality to return. — Ezra Miller

Jazz can be a blank canvas full of possibilities. — Barbara Januszkiewicz

I love producing! It's so much fun to start with a blank canvas and create the picture you want to create and see it all come together. — Martina Mcbride

The key is to photograph your obsessions, whether that's old people's hands or skyscrapers. Think of a blank canvas, because that's what you've got, and then think about what you want to see. Not anyone else. — David LaChapelle

Just dash something down if you see a blank canvas staring at you with a certain imbecility. You do not know how paralyzing it is, that staring of a blank canvas which says to the painter: you don't know anything. — Vincent Van Gogh

My job is to be a blank canvas & embody the characters that I'm playing. — Charlize Theron

You wind up creating from silence, like painting a picture on a blank canvas that could bring tears to somebody's eyes. As songwriters, our blank canvas is silence. Then we write a song from an idea that can change somebody's life. Songwriting is the closest thing to magic that we could ever experience. That's why I love songwriting. — Rodney Atkins

The real problem is I'm greedy. I want complete, utter, unceasing bliss. But I don't want to fall into it either. If happiness were money I wouldn't want to win the lottery. I want to accomplish it, urn it as John Houseman would say. I want it to be an achievement because I want to be in control of my life. I don't want things to happen to me, I want them to happen because of me. Power I want. I want to feel the way I do when I stretch a new canvas and I want to feel that way all the time. the blank canvas fills me with the power of imminent creation. I'm its god an it always bends to my will and when I'm done I know, inside, that it's markedly better than what almost all of my similarly-engaged others can achieve. That's happiness. — Sergio De La Pava

Anita felt like she finally understood why love was symbolized by the grotesque pumping organ, always threatening to clog, or break, or attack. Because the heart was the body's engine, and love was an act of the body. Your mind could tell you who to hate or respect or envy, but only your body--your nostrils and your mouth and the wide, blank canvas of your skin--could tell you who to love. — Tommy Wallach

That experience of touching down in a totally foreign place is like having a blank canvas: You begin with nothing, but stroke by stroke you build a life. This process requires everything great art requires-risk-tasking, hope, a great deal of imagination, all the qualities that are the building blocks of art. You must be able to dream something nearly impossible and toil to bring it into existence. — Edwidge Danticat

Never look back. The past is done. The future is a blank canvas. Work on creating a masterpiece. Only you have the power to make your painting beautiful. — Suzy Kassem

Every other artist begins with a blank canvas, a piece of paper the photographer begins with the finished product. — Edward Steichen

But it's like the horror of being in a studio with a blank canvas. I used to always run out of ideas because there are so many possibilities and I would just think, well what am I going to do now! — Damien Hirst

Mr. and Mrs. Hankshaw were summoned from the waiting room where Saturday Evening Post fantasies had clouded their instinctive parental concern the way that Norman Rockwell's sentimental ideas cloud the purity of a blank canvas. — Tom Robbins

Think of your day as a blank canvas, and everything you say, your art upon it. Then join your loved ones and friends, and create lasting beauty together, worthy of your inner Rembrandt. — Tom Althouse

One of the strangest things is the act of creation.
You are faced with a blank slate - a page, a canvas, a block of stone or wood, a silent musical instrument.
You then look inside yourself. You pull and tug and squeeze and fish around for slippery raw shapeless things that swim like fish made of cloud vapor and fill you with living clamor. You latch onto something. And you bring it forth out of your head like Zeus giving birth to Athena.
And as it comes out, it takes shape and tangible form.
It drips on the canvas, and slides through your pen, it springs forth and resonates into the musical strings, and slips along the edge of the sculptor's tool onto the surface of the wood or marble.
You have given it cohesion. You have brought forth something ordered and beautiful out of nothing.
You have glimpsed the divine. — Vera Nazarian

I'm constantly thinking about design, shapes, patterns and colors, so I just want to be more of a blank canvas. But there is a comfort in knowing what you're going to wear, and that probably comes from Catholic school, where I wore a uniform for 10 years. — Prabal Gurung

After all, the life itself shows a completely useless, hopeless and indifferent blank face, a deduction of no more than a blank canvas.
[Vincent Van Gogh] — Irving Stone

Many painters are afraid of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas is afraid of the truly passionate painter who dares-and who has once broken the spell of 'you can't.' — Vincent Van Gogh

Who but a brazen crazy person would go one-on-one with blank paper or canvas armed with nothing but ideas? — Mark Vonnegut

An artist does his most difficult work when he steps back from the blank canvas and thinks about what he is going to create. — Michelangelo

I was a masterpiece; a painting in itself. He was changing me, molding me, and making me into something brand new. I was a blank canvas when I came to him, ready to absorb all the paint he would slather on me. He kept going, adding layer upon layer, sometimes even shedding them just so I could turn out beautiful. And he was done now, ready to let me leave and display me on a wall for people to see. — Evelyn Deshane

In 2008 all the stars aligned perfectly for Obama's 6-point victory over John McCain. He was an inexperienced, untested neophyte, and successfully convinced enough voters to paint their own version of what hope-and-change was all about on the blank canvas he provided. — Bob Beauprez

Human, you are a machine, an organism, an animal, a primate, an artist, an athlete, a thinker, a sponge, a spirit, a comedian, a connoisseur, a cycle of breath in and breath out, an inventor, an expressor, an orator, a lover, an explorer, a creator, evolved. Your mind paints the flowers and the sky using the mind's eye as a paintbrush and light as paint. Splashing life across the blank canvas of reality. That's what you do. Every moment of every day. — Laren Grey Umphlett

Ultimately, we are all products of the experiences we have and the decisions we make as children, and it remains a peculiar detail of human condition that something as precious as the future is entrusted to us when we possess so little foresight. Perhaps that's what makes hindsight so intriguing. When you're young the future is a blank canvas, but looking back you are always able to see the big picture. — Simon Pegg

I'm a blank canvas that I can paint however I desire. For the first time ever, I get to be the character in my own fantasy land. — E.K. Blair

I'm ... getting there. I'm beginning to think that maybe it's okay to be a blank canvas. Maybe it's okay that my future is unknown. And maybe," I say with another smile, "it's okay to be inspired by the people who do know their future." "It goes both ways, you know." I link his icicle fingers through mine. "What does?" "Artists are inspired by blank canvases." My smile grows wider. — Stephanie Perkins

Every day is a blank canvas to use our free will to create something beautiful for our Creator. — Alisa Hope Wagner

Life itself, too, is forever turning an infinitely vacant, dispiriting blank side towards man on which nothing appears, any more than it does on a blank canvas. But no matter how vacant and vain, how dead life may appear to be, the man of faith, of energy, of warmth, who knows something, will not be put off so easily. — Vincent Van Gogh

Death, like fiction, is brutal in its symmetry. Take this story and strip it down -all the way back- until you are left with two points. Two dots on a vast, blank canvas, separeted by a sea of white. Here, we have come to the first point, where the batj is drawn and the hand is reachinh for the razor blade. I will meet you at the next, by the axle of a screaming wheel, the revolution of a clock, the closing of an orbit. — Lang Leav

Photography is inherently an analytic discipline. Where a painter starts with a blank canvas and builds a picture, a photographer starts with the messiness of the world and selects a picture. A photographer standing before houses and streets and people and trees and artifacts of a culture imposes an order on the scene - simplifies the jumble by giving it structure. He or she imposes this order by choosing a vantage point, choosing a frame, choosing a moment of exposure, and by selecting a plane of focus. — Stephen Shore

By itself, tofu is like wet foam rubber, but you'd no more eat it by itself and expect fine dining than you would stare at a blank canvas and expect to see fine art. — Victoria Moran

But when I accept the call of creative passion, I am a bold stroke of vermilion, a renegade hyperbole, or the wild fury of jazz violin. The world is a canvas to explore, a blank page to fill, and an arpeggio of waiting experiences. This moving masterpiece called "life" becomes intoxicating when it's lived as if it were art. — Jill Badonsky

It is human nature to take the most magical of worlds for granted, turning each one into a blank canvas upon which to paint the lives of those who would live there. Only an outsider can see a world's wonders for what they truly are. — Neal Shusterman

If I was to die here, on this beach, I wanted to have them closed anyway. I wanted a blank canvas upon which I could paint my most treasured memories of Caleb. — Bella Forrest

The spot paintings, the spin paintings, they're all a mechanical way to avoid the actual guy in a room, myself, with a blank canvas. — Damien Hirst

Even though I know who I am, musically I'm a blank canvas. I know what colors I want to use, but I don't know what picture I want to paint yet. — Becky G

I think in many ways, I'm sort of a blank canvas, because in many ways, I'm just observing the world and the people around me and their characters and letting them kind of explode off me and to find out why they're doing what they're doing. But then every once in awhile, I get to take on a whole new character. — Danny Pudi

The future is an empty canvas or a blank sheet of paper, and if you have the courage of your own thought and your own observation you can make of it what you will — Lewis H. Lapham

What I had learned from our encounter was invaluable. Never try to look like your character, leave some room for the director's imagination. Turn yourself into a blank canvas ready to be painted on. Give him the pleasure of discovering you rather than finding you. — Shohreh Aghdashloo

As long as you're true to you, you believe it and you make others believe it, then what you're doing is just art. If you give everybody a blank canvas and some paint, not everybody's picture is going to be exactly the same, but it's still art. I just do what I do. — Jake Owen

Indeed, an engineer designing a structure is not unlike an artist painting one. Both start with nothing but talent, experience, and inspiration. The fresh piece of paper on the drawing board is as blank as the newly stretched piece of canvas. — Henry Petroski

An actor is an actor is an actor. The less personality an actor has off stage the better. A blank canvas on which to draw the characters he plays. — Arthur Lowe

What makes people and companies and artistic directors and choreographers interested in working with dancers is the ability to kind of let go of everything you think you know and be a blank canvas. — Misty Copeland

They want a woman who is a canvas, white and empty. Standing still, existing for no other purpose than to serve as a mute object onto which they can paint their own hopes and desires. They want their brides veiled. They want a demure, blank space they can fill with whatever they desire."
"Miss Lowell, you magnificent creature, I want you to paint your own canvas. I want you to unveil yourself. — Courtney Milan

I'm half-Welsh, half-Russian. My maternal grandmother is Russian. I've very much a mongrel, which is good in a way because it makes me quite a blank canvas. — Sophia Myles

Fame was not real. It was all a projection
fame made me a blank canvas that people projected their love, lust, troubles, self-worth, and desire upon. Fame and power do not change us; they amplify us. If we are insecure, we grow more so. If we are addictive, we become a greater addict and insatiable. If we are desirous of truth, we seek it more. If we are generous, we become more so. If we seek to fill holes through dishonest means, we have greater access to do so. Fame and power are masterful teachers. — Jewel

You know ... that a blank wall is an apalling thing to look at ...
The wall of a museum - a canvas - a piece of film - or a guy sitting in front of a typewriter. Then, you start out to do something - that vague thing called creation. The beginning strikes awe within you. — Edward Steichen

Just slap something on it when you see a blank canvas staring at you with a sort of imbecility. — Vincent Van Gogh

I love to create, and to me, the ultimate freedom of expression is a blank canvas or a block of clay to capture whatever emotions your imagination gives it. — Daniel Boulud

That was the fun of acting, being a blank canvas you could transform into the character - Indian princess, 20s vamp, Mother Courage, Oxford don, 94-year-old wife. — Diana Quick