painting [Theme]

You see, sometimes you need to forget about what you wrote, so that later you can look at it again in a new way. And it will immediately become clear how much has not yet been done, how hard and how much still needs to be worked on the picture. I’m now removing the unnecessary stuff, exactly what makes the picture scream.

Like literature, the art of painting tells everything it wants, but with the advantage that the perceiver of the painting recognizes at once the prelude, the development of the action and the denouement.

An artist who knows how to take advantage of these properties is like a conductor who can wave his baton... accurately produce a thousand sounds.

The wind was very annoying and tore the painting off the easel several times.

I have always worked for my time. I have never troubled myself with the spirit of seeking. What I see, I express. I do not make judgments or experiments. When I have to say something, I say it as I see fit. There is no transitional art, but only good and bad artists.

Painting is nothing more than a bridge connecting the soul of the artist with the soul of the viewer.

The true use of art is, first, to develop the artist's own spiritual nature.

To paint from life, isn’t this a kind of slavery, doesn’t this show the artist’s lack of creativity? <...> If I want to paint the flaming ships of the Saint-Pierre raid on the day of the invasion, and if I know my business, I know what I want to do, won’t my work be more interesting than that which would be done by some naval officer, if he had the opportunity and had the courage to paint this motif from life? If I don’t succeed in painting, it means I’m not skilled enough, that’s all.

In essence, this is my direct calling: to give beauty to life on canvas.

There's something particularly exciting about seeing familiar places in a work of art - be it a film, a photograph or a painting.

Mona Lisa was from Naples. Born in 1479. She got married when she was sixteen years old. Well, who would remember this merchant and his wife if not for the brush of the great master? Here she is sitting in a chair, with majestic carelessness... Look carefully at her face. Why have they been writing and talking about him for almost five centuries? Five centuries! She smiles and this smile evokes a flow of strange, sublime thoughts... forever beautiful, forever alive.

When they pose very impeccably, the portrait comes out boring, lifeless, and, conversely, when sitting impatiently, successful surprises are obtained.

The artist must look (and not only look, but also be able to see) the beautiful in all areas of his own and others' art and life. He needs impressions from good performances and artists, concerts, museums, travels, good pictures of all directions, from the very left to the very right, because no one knows what will excite his soul and reveal creative secrets.

Russian painting is just as fundamentally different from European art as is literature. The point of view of our artists - whether writers or painters - on the world is preeminently tendentious.