Your Lordship sends to tell me that I should paint and have no doubts. I answer that painting is done with the brain, not the hands.

-Michelangelo full name Michelangelo Buonarroti
  Letter written to a Cardinal, Oct, collected in Creighton Gilbert (ed and trans) Complete Poems and Selected Letters of Michelangelo (1963).

Inmyopinionpainting should be considered excellent in proportion as it approaches the effect of relief, while relief should be considered bad in proportion as it approaches the effect of painting.

-Michelangelo full name Michelangelo Buonarroti
Quoted in Robert  J Clements (ed) Michelangelo:  A Self-Portrait (1968).

It was as if a veil had been torn suddenly away; I had understood, I had grasped what painting could be.

-Monet, Claude
After painting with the artist Boudin in the open air. Quoted in J Isaacson Claude Monet (1978).

  Alas! My dear sir, the very name of pictures produces a sadness of heart I cannot describe.Painting has been a smiling mistresstomany, but shehasbeenacrueljilttome.

-Morrissey full name Steven Patrick Morrissey
  Letter to his friend the writer  James Fenimore Cooper, 20 Nov.

Paintin's not important. What's important is keepin' busy.

-Moses'
  In news summaries, 2  Jan.

Every intelligent painter carries the whole culture of modern painting in his head†everything he paints is both an homage and a critique.

-Motherwell, Robert
  In the Los  Angeles Times, 31  Jul.

The highest, the most logical, the purest and strongest form of painting is the mural† It is, too, the most disinterested form, for it cannot be made a matter of privategain; itcannot be hiddenaway for thebenefit of a certain privileged few. It is for the people. It is for.

-Orozco,Jose¤   Clemente
ALL1929  Creative Art.

No, painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war for attack and defense against the enemy.

-Picasso, Pablo Ruiz y
  Responding to claims that his Communism was a mere caprice. Quoted in Alfred H BarrJr Picasso: FiftyYears of His Art (1946).

  Painting is nothing but a representation of surfaces and solidsforeshortenedorenlarged, and putontheplaneof the picture in accordance with the fashion in which the real objects seen by the eye appear on this plane.

-Piero della Francesca
c.1480^1490  De Prospectiva Pingendi.

On the floor I am more at ease, I feel nearer, more a part of the painting, since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be 'in'the painting.

-Pollock, (Paul) Jackson
  Quoted in ItaloTomassoni Pollock (1968).

Abstract painting is abstract. It confronts you.

-Pollock, (Paul) Jackson
Quoted in FrancisV O'Connor Jackson Pollock (1967).

   There is something in painting which cannot be explained, and that something is essential.You come to nature withyour theories, and nature knocksthemall flat.

-Renoir, Pierre Auguste
c.1915  Quoted in AmbroiseVollard Renoir, an Intimate Record (1930).

Tell me, frankly, what ought to remain of Lenin: an art bronze, oil portraits, etchings, watercolours, his secretary's diary, his friends'memoirsö or a file of photographs taken of him at work and rest, archives of his books, writing pads, notebooks, shorthand reports, films, phonograph records? I don't think there's any choice. Art hasno place inmodernlife† Everycultured modern man must wage war against art, as against opium. Photograph and be photographed!

-Rodchenko, Alexander
Quoted in Robert HughesThe Shock of the New (1980).

A painting that is an act is inseparable from the biography of the artist.

-Rosenberg, Harold
  'TheAmerican Action Painters', in Art News, no.51, Dec.

   One does not walk around a statue any more than one walks around a painting, because one does not walk around a figure to receive an impression from it.Nothing is material in space.

-Rosso, Medardo
Quoted in Edmond Claris De l'impressionisme en sculpture, 'Medardo Rosso' (1902).

Ethics are no more a part of poetry than theyare of painting.

-Stevens,Wallace
  Opus Posthumous, Aphorisms,'Adagia'.

According to Pliny, painting was brought to Egypt by Gyges of Lydia; for he says that Gyges once saw his own shadow cast by the light of a fire and instantly drew his own outline on the wall with a piece of charcoal.

-Vasari, Giorgio
  Lives of theArtists (translated by George Bull,1965).

Good painting is like good cooking: it can be tasted, but not explained.

-Vlaminck, Maurice de
Attributed.

I get excited by the shape of a person's nose, the tone of their eyes, or the way their back looks when they're turned away from me. That's my reason for painting.

-Wyeth, Andrew Newell
  In National Geographic, Jul.