Quote

Painting is like having a bad mistress who spends and spends and it's never enough ... I tell myself that even if a tolerable study comes out of it from time to time, it would have been cheaper to buy it from somebody else.

Vincent Van Gogh

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Vincent Van Gogh
Age: 37 †
Born: 1853
Born: March 30
Died: 1890
Died: July 29
Botanical Illustrator
Draftsperson
Drawer
Etcher
Graphic Artist
Lithographer
Painter
Printmaker
Brooklyn
New York
Vincent Willem van Gogh
Vincent-Willem van Gogh
van Gogh
Fan-kao
van gogh
Vincent Van Gogh
Wensheng Fangu
Fan-ku
v. van gogh
Fan'gao
Fangu
Gogh
j. van gogh
Enough
Cheaper
Even
Mistress
Never
Painting
Would
Somebody
Time
Study
Like
Comes
Tell
Tolerable
Else
Spends

More quotes by Vincent Van Gogh

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Life itself, too, is forever turning an infinitely vacant, dispiriting blank side towards man on which nothing appears, any more than it does on a blank canvas. But no matter how vacant and vain, how dead life may appear to be, the man of faith, of energy, of warmth, who knows something, will not be put off so easily.
Vincent Van Gogh
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Gauguin says that when sailors have to move a heavy load or raise an anchor, they all sing together to keep them up and give them vim. That's just what artists lack!
Vincent Van Gogh
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Be clearly aware of the stars and infinity on high. Then life seems almost enchanted after all.
Vincent Van Gogh
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I began to paint again, even though I could barely hold the brush, but knowing exactly what I wanted to paint, I began three more large canvases... of large wheat fields under cloudy skies, and it did not take a great deal to express sadness and loneliness... I believe these paintings say what words cannot.
Vincent Van Gogh
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My aim in life is to make pictures and drawings, as many and as well as I can then, at the end of my life... looking back with love and tender regret, and thinking, 'Oh, the pictures I might have made!'
Vincent Van Gogh
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There is no blue without yellow and without orange, and if you put in blue, then you must put in yellow, and orange too, mustn't you? Oh well, you will tell me that what I write to you are only banalities.
Vincent Van Gogh
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Drawing is the root of everything.
Vincent Van Gogh
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I often think of you all, one cannot do what one wants in life. The more you feel attached to a spot, the more ruthlessly you are compelled to leave it, but the memories remain, and one remembers - as in a looking glass, darkly - one's absent friends.
Vincent Van Gogh
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It's as interesting and as difficult to say a thing well as to paint it. There is the art of lines and colours, but the art of words exists too, and will never be less important.
Vincent Van Gogh
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One can speak poetry just by arranging colors well, just as one can say comforting things in music.
Vincent Van Gogh
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Nature always begins by resisting the artist, but he who really takes it seriously does not allow that resistance to put him off his stride on the contrary, it is that much more of a stimulus to fight for victory.
Vincent Van Gogh
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I've never felt a desire (and I don't believe I ever shall) to bring the public to my work... a certain popularity seems to me the least desirable of things.
Vincent Van Gogh
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And love makes one calmer about many things, and in that way, one is more fit for one's work.
Vincent Van Gogh
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I am astonished at the high prices paid for works by painters who are dead, prices none of them could expect when they were alive. It is a kind of tulip trade, in which living painters suffer but do not profit.
Vincent Van Gogh
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Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination do not become the slave of your model.
Vincent Van Gogh
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Still, there is a calm, pure harmony, and music inside of me.
Vincent Van Gogh
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My brushwork is quite unsystematic. I slam the paint on in all sorts of ways and leave each result to take care of itself.
Vincent Van Gogh
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What is drawing? It is working oneself through an invisible iron wall that seems to stand between what one feels and what one can do.
Vincent Van Gogh
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As practice makes perfect, I cannot but make progress each drawing one makes, each study one paints, is a step forward.
Vincent Van Gogh
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To paint nature you must be in it a long time.
Vincent Van Gogh