A Quote by Harold Rosenberg

The big moment came when it was decided to paint...Just To Paint. The gesture on the canvas was a gesture of liberation, from Value- political, aesthetic, moral. — © Harold Rosenberg
The big moment came when it was decided to paint...Just To Paint. The gesture on the canvas was a gesture of liberation, from Value- political, aesthetic, moral.
Paint records the most delicate gesture and the most tense. It tells whether the painter sat or stood or crouched in front of the canvas. Paint is a cast made of the painter's movements, a portrait of the painter's body and thoughts.
The paintings are more about physicality and gesture than meditation. I'd compare it to playing scales on the Cello - each sound (pitch and intensity) depends on the manner in which you hold and apply the bow. The same goes for the gesture of applying paint to a surface.
I paint on the ground. I paint with sticks, with big paint cans, and whatever else falls in it. Basically, what I'm doing is capturing unbridled emotion and putting it on canvas. It's like capturing lightning in a bottle.
For one thing, I want gesture-any kind of gesture, all kinds of gesture-gentle or brutal, joyous or tragic; the gesture of space soaring, sinking, streaming, whirling; the gestures of light flowing or spurting through color. I see everything as possessing or possessed by gesture. I've often thought of my paintings as having an axis around which everything revolves.
Life in itself is an empty canvas; it becomes whatsoever you paint on it. You can paint misery, you can paint bliss. This freedom is your glory.
Be Bold. It's just canvas, just paint. If it doesn't work for you, paint over it and start again. Don't be afraid that you are wasting supplies. Every failure teaches something, if only what not to do.
Sometimes I scrape off a lot. You have on the floor, like cow dung in the field, this big glob of paint... and it's just a lot of inert matter, inert paint. Then I look back at the canvas, and it's not inert - it's active, moving and living.
Graffiti is a lot easier than the canvas actually, because it's such a large format, so when you're going to such a thin detail, it's not that thin in the realm of things because it's such a big wall. This would take a small paint brush of detail, but on a huge wall, if that's the size of a building, the thinnest detail is still that big, it's a quick spray. Spray paint is easiest for me. I love spray paint.
Light gesture and color of the key compliments of any photograph. Light and color are obvious, but it is just her that is the most important. There is gesture in everything. It's up to you to find a gesture that is most telling.
I actually started to think a lot about the difference between a creative gesture and a noncreative gesture. I decided that all gestures were creative. Because you always have to make a decision at some point.
Expression is not a matter of passion mirrored on the human face or revealed by a violent gesture. When I paint a picture, its every detail is expressive.
Most of the paint I use is a liquid, flowing kind of paint. The brushes I use are more a sticks rather than brushes – the brush doesn’t touch the surface on the canvas, it’s just above [so] I am able to be more free and to have greater freedom and move about the canvas, with greater ease.
He sat by her, watching every gesture she made, as if he would paint her portrait afterward.
Painters paint outdoors, or in rooms full of people; they paint their lovers, alone, naked; they paint and eat; they paint and listen to the radio. It is a soothing way of doing your job.
I don't paint over my paintings with black paint. I paint black paintings. It isn't because I'm sad, just as I didn't paint red paintings yesterday because I was happy. Nor will I paint yellow paintings tomorrow because I'm jealous.
People sometimes think I take a white canvas and paint a black sign on it,but this is not true.I paint the white as well as the black and the white is just as important.
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