Edward Hopper Quotes

If you could say it in words there would be no reason to paint.

Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world.

It's (the lack of communication between the people in his paintings, ed.) probably a reflection of my own, if I may say, loneliness. I don't know. It could be the whole human condition.

No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination.

The only quality that endures in art is a personal vision of the world. Methods are transient: personality is enduring.

I guess I'm not very human. All I really want to do is paint light on the side of a house.

More of me comes out when I improvise.

In general it can be said that a nation's art is greatest when it most reflects the character of its people.

To me the most important thing is the sense of going on. You know how beautiful things are when you're traveling.

So many people say painting is fun. I don't find it fun at all. It's hard work for me.

The only real influence I've ever had was myself.

My aim in painting has always been the most exact transcription possible of my most intimate impression of nature.

One of the weaknesses of much abstract painting is the attempt to substitute the inventions of the intellect for a pristine imaginative conception. The inner life of a human being is a vast and varied realm and does not concern itself alone with stimulating arrangements of color, form and design. The term 'life' as used in art is something not to be held in contempt, for it applies all of its existence, and the province of art is to react to it and not to shun it. Painting will have to deal more fully and less obliquely with life and nature's phenomena before it can again be great.

What I wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house.

There is a sort of elation about sunlight on the upper part of a house.

When I don't feel in the mood for painting I go to the movies for a week or more. I go on a regular movie binge!

I once got a little camera to use for details of architecture and so forth but the photo was always so different from the perspective the eye gives, I gave it up.

The idea (for the painting 'Room in New York', 1932, ed.) had been in my mind a long time before I painted it. It was suggested by glimpses of lighted interiors seen as I walked along city streets at night, probably near the district where I live (Washington Square, New York, fh) although it's no particular street or house, but is really a synthesis of many impressions.

I have tried to present my sensations in what is the most congenial and impressive form possible to me.

So much of every art is an expression of the subconscious that it seems to me most of all the important qualities are put there unconsciously, and little of importance by the conscious intellect. But these are things for the psychologist to untangle.

There will be, I think, an attempt to grasp again the surprise and accidents of nature and a more intimate and sympathetic study of its moods, together with a renewed wonder and humility on the part of such as are still capable of these basic reactions.

I find in working always the disturbing intrusion of elements not a part of my most interested vision, and the inevitable obliteration and replacement of this vision by the work itself as it proceeds.

Well, I've always been interested in approaching a big city in a train, and I can't exactly describe the sensations, but they're entirely human and perhaps have nothing to do with aesthetics.

Well, I have a very simple method of painting.

Yes, linseed oil. I used to use poppy oil, but I have heard that poppy oil is given to cracking pigment too, so I use it no longer.