Edward Hopper Quotes & Sayings (Page 2)

“My aim in painting has always been the most exact transcription possible of my most intimate impression of nature.”

“The question of the value of nationality in art is perhaps unsolvable.”

“Painting will have to deal more fully and less obliquely with life and nature's phenomena before it can again become great.”

“If the picture needs varnishing later, I allow a restorer to do that, if there's any restoring necessary.”

“I believe that the great painters with their intellect as master have attempted to force this unwilling medium of paint and canvas into a record of their emotions.”

“After all, we are not French and never can be, and any attempt to be so is to deny our inheritance and to try to impose upon ourselves a character that can be nothing but a veneer upon the surface.”

“There will be, I think, an attempt to grasp again the surprise and accidents of nature and a more intimate and sympathetic study of its moods, together with a renewed wonder and humility on the part of such as are still capable of these basic reactions.”

“If the technical innovations of the Impressionists led merely to a more accurate representation of nature, it was perhaps of not much value in enlarging their powers of expression.”

“It's to paint directly on the canvas without any funny business, as it were, and I use almost pure turpentine to start with, adding oil as I go along until the medium becomes pure oil. I use as little oil as I can possibly help, and that's my method.”

“I find in working always the disturbing intrusion of elements not a part of my most interested vision, and the inevitable obliteration and replacement of this vision by the work itself as it proceeds.”