Edward Hopper Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

"One of the weaknesses of much abstract painting is the attempt to substitute the inventions of the intellect for a pristine imaginative conception."

"This direction is sterile and without hope to those who wish to give painting a richer and more human meaning and a wider scope."

"Yes, linseed oil. I used to use poppy oil, but I have heard that poppy oil is given to cracking pigment too, so I use it no longer."

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

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

"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."

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

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

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

"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."

"More of me comes out when I improvise."

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

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

"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."