At first I had some idea that the absence of color made the work more physical. Early on I was very involved with the notion of the painting as an object and tended to attack that idea from different directions. – Jasper Johns
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. – Jackson Pollock
I started experimenting with jewelry in my 20s – I was playing around with gemstones and painting things in gold leaf, and it turned into this huge obsession for me, so I launched my first jewelry line, Jade Inc. – Jade Jagger
Decades ago, Gerhard Richter found a painterly philosopher’s stone. Like Jackson Pollock before him, he discovered something that had been in painting all along, always overlooked or discounted. – Jerry Saltz
I have a painting where somebody’s holding a chicken, and underneath the chicken is somebody’s head. – Jean-Michel Basquiat
You can’t work in the movies. Movies are all about lighting. Very few filmmakers will concentrate on the story. You get very little rehearsal time, so anything you do onscreen is a kind of speed painting. – John Malkovich
No one purposefully paints a bad painting. It’s someone who’s trying to do a good painting, but it’s terrible. I have one with a matador, and the bull is going through the blanket. You can tell the painter didn’t know how to paint it. – Jennifer Coolidge
I’ve never felt particularly ambitious or driven, that’s for sure, although I like to create stuff, whether it’s a little doodle, a drawing, a small painting or a movie or a piece of music, so I suppose I’m driven by that. Everything I’ve done has felt very natural, and it’s happened because it’s happened. – Johnny Depp
I have not written in vain if I have heretofore done anything towards diminishing the reputation of the Renaissance landscape painting. – John Ruskin
After my divorce, painting took me out of panic mode and into a serene, calm place. I could absolutely lose myself. – Jane Seymour
Painting is something that you need to do, if not every day, then certainly most days. It is almost like being a pianist: if you stop, you lose something. – John Berger
Unlike any other visual image, a photograph is not a rendering, an imitation or an interpretation of its subject, but actually a trace of it. No painting or drawing, however naturalist, belongs to its subject in the way that a photograph does. – John Berger
There are certain things in which mediocrity is not to be endured, such as poetry, music, painting, public speaking. – Jean de la Bruyere
I want my paintings to look like they were found in a garage. If they get a scratch or a hole in them, it just becomes part of the painting. – John Mellencamp
I don’t work from drawings. I don’t make sketches and drawings and color sketches into a final painting. – Jackson Pollock
In drawing after drawing, pastel after pastel, painting after painting, the contours of Degas’s dancing figures become, at a certain point, darkly insistent, tangled and dusky. It may be around an elbow, a heel, an armpit, a calf muscle, the nape of a neck. – John Berger
At the point where I’m trying to force something and it’s not happening, and I’m getting frustrated with, say, writing a poem, I can go and pick up the brushes and start painting. At the point where the painting seems to not be going anywhere, I go and pick up the guitar. – Joni Mitchell
My paintings have gotten to be pretty popular and I’ve taken a little bit more interest in painting the last few years. In fact, my novel that I wrote not too long ago, ‘The Hornet’s Nest,’ I painted the cover picture for it and I do a good bit of painting now. – Jimmy Carter
I rage against Vincent van Gogh for needing to die at 37, after painting for only ten years. – Jerry Saltz
It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess. Otherwise there is pure harmony, an easy give and take, and the painting comes out well. – Jackson Pollock
In fiction, plenty do the job of conveying information, rousing suspense, painting characters, enabling them to speak. But only certain sentences breathe and shift about, like live matter in soil. – Jhumpa Lahiri
