Edward Hopper's Quotes

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.

The trend in some of the contemporary movements in art, but by no means all, seems to deny this ideal and to me appears to lead to a purely decorative conception of painting.

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.

Well, I've always been interested in approaching a big city in a train, and I can't exactly describe the sensations, but they're entirely human and perhaps have nothing to do with aesthetics.

If you could say it in words there would be no reason to paint.

More of me comes out when I improvise.

Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world.

What I wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house.

Maybe I am not very human - what I wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house.

No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination.

In general it can be said that a nation's art is greatest when it most reflects the character of its people.

The only real influence I've ever had was myself.

I have tried to present my sensations in what is the most congenial and impressive form possible to me.

I find linseed oil and white lead the most satisfactory mediums.

I think that zinc white has a property of scaling and cracking.

I trust Winsor and Newton and I paint directly upon it.

I use a retouching varnish which is made in France, Libert, and that's all the varnish I use.

If I had the energy, I would have done it all over the county.

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

In its most limited sense, modern, art would seem to concern itself only with the technical innovations of the period.

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

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

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