A Quote by Harold Rosenberg

The artist is obliged to invent the self who will paint his pictures. — © Harold Rosenberg
The artist is obliged to invent the self who will paint his pictures.
Someone has asked me to paint Biblical pictures, and I say no, I'll not paint something that we know nothing about, might just as well paint something that will happen two thousand years hence.
I've been asked often what is the difference between an amateur and a professional artist, and I will tell you. An amateur artist is one who works all week at something else so he can paint on Saturday and Sunday. A professional artist is one whose wife works so he can paint all the time.
He made his colours, built his stretchers, plastered his canvas, painted his pictures, carpentered his frames, and painted them. 'Too bad I can't buy my own pictures,' he murmured aloud. 'Then I'd be completely self-sufficient.'
Self-deceit is a most damaging trait. The remedy, for an artist, is to paint a self-portrait!
A painter will paint a cobbler, carpenter, or any other artist, though he knows nothing of their arts; and, if he is a good artist, he may deceive children or simple persons, when he shows them his picture of a carpenter from a distance, and they will fancy that they are looking at a real carpenter.
An artist is forced by others to paint out of his own free will.
I grew up thinking art was pictures until I got into music and found I was an artist and didn't paint.
The situation is that of him who is helpless, cannot act, in the event cannot paint, since he is obliged to paint. The act is of him who, helpless, unable to act, acts, in the event paints, since he is obliged to paint.
You are not an artist simply because you paint or sculpt or make pots that cannot be used. An artist is a poet in his or her own medium. And when an artist produces a good piece, that work has mystery, an unsaid quality; it is alive.
You can't paint pictures of love. You can only imagine them. So I suppose I don't need a painting by another artist. I have enough of my own.
To be born with a unique instinct, will demand 'unique duties'. If you didn't think about being an artist before 7 years of age you probably don't have it and you will be able to paint what you want to paint.
I used to paint pictures - what happened was, I used to draw and paint pictures. And some of my friends would be, like, 'Yo, you should put that on a T-shirt,' because that's where their brain would go.
The artist is an interpreter of Nature. People learn to love Nature through pictures. To the artist, nothing is in vain; nothing beneath his notice. If he is great enough, he will exalt every subject which he treats.
The reason that I'm an actor, or an artist, is ultimately because I'm trying to paint a self-portrait, and the most complete and beautiful self-portrait that you can.
The artist needs but a roof, a crust of bread, and his easel, and all the rest God gives him in abundance. He must live to paint and not paint to live.
It is the work of the Canadian artist to paint or play or write in such a way that life will be enlarged for himself and his fellow man. The painter will look around him . . . and finding everything good, will strive to communicate that feeling through a portrayal of the essentials of sunlight, or snow, or tree or tragic cloud, or human face, according to his power and individuality.
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