Quotes & Sayings About Colors By Artists

The atmosphere beneath is languorous, and is so tinged with azure that what artists call the middle distance partakes also of that hue, while the horizon beyond is of the deepest ultramarine. — Thomas Hardy

I barely registered moving into the long gallery, one hand absentmindedly wrapping around my throat as I looked up at the paintings.

So many, so different, yet all arranged to flow together seamlessly... Such different views and snippets and angles of the world. Pastorals, portraits, still lifes . . . each a story and an experience, each a voice shouting or whispering or singing about what that moment, that feeling, had been like, each a cry into the void of time that they had been here, had existed. Some had been painted through eyes like mine, artists who saw in colors and shapes I understood. Some showcased colors I had not considered; these had a bend to the world that told me a different set of eyes had painted them. A portal into the mind of a creature so unlike me, and yet . . . and yet I looked at its work and understood, and felt, and cared. — Sarah J. Maas

Not without deep pain do we admit to ourselves that the artists of all ages have in their highest flights carried to heavenly transfiguration precisely those conceptions that we now recognize as false: they are the glorifiers of the religious and philosophical errors of humanity, and they could not have done this without their belief in the absolute truth of these errors. Now if the belief in such truth generally diminishes, if the rainbow colors at the outermost ends of human knowing and imagining fade: then the species of art that, like the Divina commedia, Raphael's pictures, Michelangelo's frescoes, the Gothic cathedrals, presupposes not only a cosmic, but also a metaphysical significance for art objects can never blossom again. A touching tale will come of this, that there was once such an art, such belief by artists. — Friedrich Nietzsche

The darling schemes and fondest hopes of man are frequently frustrated by time. While sagacity contrives, patience matures, and labor industriously executes, disappointment laughs at the curious fabric, formed by so many efforts, and gay with so many brilliant colors, and, while the artists imagine the work arrived at the moment of completion, brushes away the beautiful web, and leaves nothing behind. — Timothy Dwight V

In fact, scientists have taken advantage of this effect by using the amount of red in contemporary paintings of sunsets to estimate the intensity of volcanic eruptions. Several Greek scientists, led by C. S. Zerefos, digitally measured the amount of red - relative to other primary colors - in more than 550 samples of landscape art by 181 artists from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries to produce estimates of the amount of volcanic ash in the air at various times. Paintings from the years following the Tambora eruption used the most red paint; those after Krakatoa came a close second. — William K. Klingaman

Great artistic talent in any direction ... is hardly inherent to the man. It comes and goes; it is often possessed only for a short phase in his life; it hardly ever colors his character as a whole and has nothing to do with the moral and intellectual stuff of the mind and soul. Many great artists, perhaps most great artists, have been poor fellows indeed, whom to know was to despise. — Hilaire Belloc

No matter what challenge you may be facing, you must remember that while the canvas of your life is painted with daily experiences, behaviors, reactions, and emotions, you're the one controlling the brush. If I had known this at 21, I could have saved myself a lot of heartache and self-doubt. It would have been a revelation to understand that we are all the artists of our own lives - and that we can use as many colors and brushstrokes as we like. — Oprah Winfrey

When we digital artists talk about painting on the computer, that is exactly what we do. The paints we use are pixels, the brush we use is a pressure sensitive pen. The colors are the same as painters use, and how we get to the final image is the same gut wrenching way. — Donald Lambert

The greatest drug of all, my dear, was not one of those pills in so many colors that you took over the years, was not the opium, the hash you smoked in houses at the beach, or the speed or smack you shot up in Sutherland's apartment, no, it wasn't any of these. It was the city, darling, it was the city, the city itself. And do you see why I had to leave? As Santayana said, dear, artists are unhappy because they are not interested in happiness; they live for beauty. God, was that steaming, loathsome city beautiful!!! And why finally no human lover was possible, because I was in love with all men, with the city itself. — Andrew Holleran

Here's what I love about painting. It's not about words or voice or tone or point of view or narrative arc (perish the thought); it's about the way certain branches stick straight out from the trunks of certain trees; it's about the clouds that you can barely see as well as the ones that pile on top of each other; it's about the swoop of telephone wires and the shapes and colors of shadows. A real painter recently told me that all artists want to draw telephone wires. — Abigail Thomas

Generally I would say that I'm not a super-adventurous shadow girl. I'm all about a lip, eyebrow, and mascara, but through the years, working with different talented makeup artists, I learned how awesome eye makeup can be if you get it right. That's how we got the colors we came up with. — Gwen Stefani

Artists try to say things that can't be said. in a fragile net of words, gestures, or colors, we hope to capture a feeling; a taste; a painful longing. but the net is always too porous, and we are left with the sweet frustration of almost knowing, which is teasingly pleasurable. — Alan Alda