A Quote by John Lithgow

I was very interested in being a painter. I had facility, I had talent, and I loved painting and printmaking, and I was quite serious about it. — © John Lithgow
I was very interested in being a painter. I had facility, I had talent, and I loved painting and printmaking, and I was quite serious about it.
I always wanted to be a painter. I loved painting. I went on three different art courses but had no talent whatsoever.
Having a background in doing printmaking and letterpress, I think that I became very interested in images that were flat and graphic. And my painting still today is very flat...American craft is like that too - the painting is very flat. And also the painting that you see on the storefronts, handmade signs, tend to be very flat. That's probably my biggest influence.
When I was in high school, I was going to be a painter because I had a facility for painting. I could do it, but I didn't have anything to say in that medium.
Not every painter has a gift for painting, in fact, many painters are disappointed when they meet with difficulties in art. Painting done under pressure by artists without the necessary talent can only give rise to formlessness, as painting is a profession that requires peace of mind. The painter must always seek the essence of things, always represent the essential characteristics and emotions of the person he is painting.
When I was growing up, I wanted to be a house painter like my father, but I was always screwing up when I went to work with him. I had a talent for knocking over paint and painting myself into corners. I also realized fairly quickly that painting bored me.
For the first time in my life I tried whale. It was very chewy and quite fatty. My friend had had whale before, so I knew it would be quite blubbery. It was delicious. I loved it. It was smoked, so it had a lovely kind of tangy taste to it. We had it a couple of nights. I was won over. It was very yummy.
I think I've always been afraid of painting, really. Right from the beginning. All my paintings are about painting without a painter. Like a kind of mechanical form of painting. Like finding some imaginary computer painter, or a robot who paints.
Being someone who had had a very difficult childhood, a very difficult adolescence - it had to do with not quite poverty, but close. It had to do with being brought up in a family where no one spoke English, no one could read or write English. It had to do with death and disease and lots of other things. I was a little prone to depression.
I wanted to study painting and become a painter, but I had a huge flip-over in my life when I was about 18 or 19. I was part of a criminal environment; I got arrested and convicted, and I had to start thinking in a new way.
Look, I've had four kicks at the can. You've had a tremendous career. We're also happy. We've loved. We've lived. We don't starve. We haven't been shot in the gut. So at that point, I started getting a little more serious about the content we were making and the business and building the business. I also became more serious about life and being happy. I got married, I have kids - I'm happy at a cellular level now.
It is difficult to say why I decided I wanted to be an artist. Obviously, I had some facility, more than other people, but sometimes facility comes because one is more interested in looking at things, examining them, more interested in the visual world than other people are.
I wasn't interested in sport or anything obvious, so I didn't stand out. I was interested in music, but I couldn't read music, so I wasn't allowed to do the GCSE. I was interested in painting, but no one's interested in a 16-year-old boy who's interested in painting. I wanted to get out of school very, very quickly.
I was really serious about painting, so I could never be a Sunday painter. You can't just switch it on and off.
When I was 12 years old, I went to Natchitoches, La.; it was summer vacation with my family. We visited a plantation, Melrose. And I met an Afro-American woman who was a painter. I already had some idea of what I wanted to do in life, and one of the things that interested me was painting.
I was at an art museum with my parents, and was quite taken with a [Vincent] Van Gogh painting. I stood admiring the painting for some time, and then realized that in addition to feeling moved by the beauty of the painting, I felt a little jealous of the painter.
I loved 'Cabaret.' I loved what it had to say and the whole style and brilliance of the book. It was my first time performing Fred Ebb and John Kander's work. They took risks. Even when their shows are fun and funny, they are about very serious issues.
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