Edward Hopper Quotations

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

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.

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

More of me comes out when I improvise.

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.

The question of the value of nationality in art is perhaps unsolvable.

In its most limited sense, modern, art would seem to concern itself only with the technical innovations of the period.

After all, we are not French and never can be, and any attempt to be so is to deny our inheritance and to try to impose upon ourselves a character that can be nothing but a veneer upon the surface.

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.

The trend in some of the contemporary movements in art, but by no means all, seems to deny this ideal and to me appears to lead to a purely decorative conception of painting.

I think that zinc white has a property of scaling and cracking.

Maybe I am not very human - what I wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house.

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

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

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

I believe that the great painters with their intellect as master have attempted to force this unwilling medium of paint and canvas into a record of their emotions.

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

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

I trust Winsor and Newton and I paint directly upon it.

If the picture needs varnishing later, I allow a restorer to do that, if there's any restoring necessary.

If the technical innovations of the Impressionists led merely to a more accurate representation of nature, it was perhaps of not much value in enlarging their powers of expression.

It's to paint directly on the canvas without any funny business, as it were, and I use almost pure turpentine to start with, adding oil as I go along until the medium becomes pure oil. I use as little oil as I can possibly help, and that's my method.

Well, I have a very simple method of painting.

If I had the energy, I would have done it all over the county.

I use a retouching varnish which is made in France, Libert, and that's all the varnish I use.

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

Painting will have to deal more fully and less obliquely with life and nature's phenomena before it can again become great.

I find linseed oil and white lead the most satisfactory mediums.

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.

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

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!

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Everyone goes to the 'Grands-Boulevards' (in Paris, ed.) and let himself loose... ...Do not picture these in costume, they are not for the most part... ...perhaps a clown with a big nose, or two girls with bare necks and short skirts... ...the parade of the queens of the halls (markets) is also one of the events... ...Some are pretty but look awkward in their silk dresses and crowns, particularly as the broad sun displays their defects - perhaps a neck too thin or a painted face which shows ghastley white in the sunlight.

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

Methods are transient: personality is enduring.

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

This direction is sterile and without hope to those who wish to give painting a richer and more human meaning and a wider scope.