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We've got to learn to declare things done. Especially when they're not. Not completed, that is, to the level of perfection or result that we initially visualized or committed to. (David Allen, author)
I don't want to sign the work until it looks like it has been lived on, until I have violated the open white space and created something that can become independent of me and fend for itself. (Dion Archibald)
Art completes what nature cannot bring to a finish. (Aristotle)
Begin - to begin is half the work, let half still remain; again begin this, and thou wilt have finished. (Marcus Aurelius)
Put your energy into 'finishing' – and you're missing your next great painting. (J.R. Baldini)
That's all there is, there isn't any more. (Ethel Barrymore)
I always work out of uncertainty, but when a painting's finished it becomes a fixed idea, apparently a final statement. In time though, uncertainty returns... your thought process goes on. (Georg Baselitz)
In talking about the necessity to finish a thing, we said American painters finish a thing that looks unfinished, and the French, they finish it. I have seen Matisses that were more unfinished and yet more finished than any American painters. Matisse was obviously in a terrific emotion at the time and he was more unfinished than finished. (William Baziotes)
I consider my painting finished when my eye goes to a particular spot on the canvas. But if I put the picture away about thirty feet on the wall and the movements keep returning to me and the eye seems to be responding to something living, then it is finished. (William Baziotes)
- Endgame,1957...
The end is in the beginning and yet you go on. (Samuel Beckett)
A thing is complete when you can let it be. (Gita Bellin)
The extreme proposition on which Giacometti based all his mature work was that no reality... could ever be shared. This is why he believed it impossible for a work to be finished. This is why the content of any work is not the nature of the figure or head portrayed but the incomplete history of him staring at it. (John Berger)
The song is ended / But the melody lingers on. (Irving Berlin)
Our films are never truly finished. We just get to stop at our deadline. (Brad Bird)
I don't like finished things, because finished is over, dead. (Norbert Bisky)
It's hard to know exactly when to stop... I like for a painting to look a little unfinished, kind've like my hair. But sometimes I just can't find my brush, hairbrush that is! (Chris Bolmeier)
Year's end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us. (Hal Borland)
To the impressionist, the work was finished, no matter how casual the execution, when the idea was completely realized on the canvas. (Richard J. Boyle)
The painting is finished when the idea has disappeared. (Georges Braque)
It is the act of painting, not the finished painting. (Georges Braque)
Every great painting is left incomplete at the point where its completion is obvious. (Robert Brault)
There is no such thing as the final touch. But touch we must, both to perceive as well as to create. Neither will the creation ever be complete nor its perception absolute. (Robert G. Breur)
Living in a left to right reading society leaves my 'finishes' in the right corner, particularly as I use smudgy calligraphy ink and am right-handed. (Kristi Bridgeman)
The painting is always finished before the artist thinks it is. (Harley Brown)
- Abt Vogler...
Well, it is gone at last, the palace of music I reared; / Gone! and the good tears start, the praises that come too slow; / For one is assured at first, one scarce can say that he feared, / That he even gave it a thought, the gone thing was to go. (Robert Browning)
It is often the easiest move that completes the game. (Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton)
- Forerunners of Modern Music...
A finished work is exactly that, requires resurrection. (John Cage)
Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it. (Truman Capote)
At the end of the day, the only thing that counts is your insight, your reaction, and the way you convey your feeling towards the subject. (Alvaro Castagnet)
I have to keep working, not to arrive at finish, which arouses the admiration of fools... I must seek completion only for the pleasure of being truer and more knowing. (Paul Cezanne)
When you get a thing the way you want it, leave it alone. (Winston Churchill)
If I set myself a task, be it ever so trifling, I shall see it through. How else shall I have confidence in myself to do important things? (George S. Clason)
Finishing is torture... There's always some newly seen flaw. But the little glimpses of beauty between the anxiety make it worth it. (Jacob Collins)
Shift often from openness to closure. (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi)
I have this thing that, once I finish a movie, I never see it again. (Alfonso Cuaron)
One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done. (Marie Curie)
The human mind appreciates closure and a clean ending. (Jeff Davidson)
A fine suggestion, a sketch with great feeling, can be as expressive as the most finished product. (Eugene Delacroix)
Perhaps the sketch of a work is so pleasing because everyone can finish it as he chooses. (Eugene Delacroix)
One always has to spoil a picture a little bit in order to finish it. (Eugene Delacroix)
- after a plein air session...
It is as if I am awakened from an intense daydream. Where did the time go? The effort is very tiring but not unpleasantly so. If I can get away with it, a nice nap tops off the experience. (Paul deMarrais)
How do you complete a painting, really? There are paintings by so many different artists that are interesting precisely because they haven't really been completed. (Peter Doig)
I really injoy the finishing part of the painting process. It's like preforming the Beethoven Sonata when all the hard slog has been done to make it a possibility. (Leoni Duff)
- Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's 'Learned'...
The end never comes when you think it will. It's always ten steps past the worst moment, then a weird turn to the left. (Lena Dunham)
To put it as simply as possible - and this is a simple answer, not a total answer - I know when a painting's finished when I understand why I wanted to do it in the first place. (James Elkins)
I have a lot of novels that I haven't finished. I usually get 150 pages in and I realize it's not going anywhere. I don't publish everything I write. I must have six unfinished novels at least. (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Finishing a good book is like leaving a good friend. (William Feather)
Once a work is finished, I forget about being a composer and approach it as a pianist. (Vivian Fine)
All large tasks are completed in a series of starts. (Neil Fiore)
It can be difficult to assess when a painting is complete. For this reason, I often set aside the painting to prevent overworking it. When I am unsure, I ask myself if doing more would add or take away from the purpose of the painting. (Mary French)
The work isn't complete for me until I add words, as reading is as important to me as painting. (Veronika Funk)
The best way to finish a painting is to start a new one. (Sylvio Gagnon)
Do not finish your work too much. An impression is not sufficiently durable for its first freshness to survive a belated search for infinite detail; in this way you let the lava grow cool... (Paul Gauguin)
That's the terrible thing: the more one works on a picture, the more impossible it becomes to finish it. (Alberto Giacometti)
A painting is finished when to have done less would be considered a sin and more a crime. (Ted Godwin)
Don't improve it into a flop! (Samuel Goldwyn)
When something is finished, that means it's dead, doesn't it? I believe in everlastingness. I never finish a painting - I just stop working on it for a while. (Arshile Gorky)
Each piece was started for a reason, hence deserves a finish. (Brad Greek)
I feel a finished painting is only a fair approximation of the unity of direction characteristic of a sketch. (Irwin Greenberg)
Take the theory of the 'last inch' holds that as you approach the end of a painting, you must gather all your resources for the finish. (Irwin Greenberg)
Try not to finish too fast. (Irwin Greenberg)
Sign it and ship it. (George De Groat)
The canvas you are working on modifies the previous ones in an unending, baffling chain which never seems to finish. What sympathy is demanded of the viewer? He is asked to 'see' the future links. (Philip Guston)
The important thing is not what the author, or any artist, had in mind to begin with but at what point he decided to stop. (D. W. Harding)
When a thing is not worth overdoing, leave it alone! (Henry S. Haskins)
Put off finish as it takes a lifetime - wait until later to try to finish things - make a lot of starts. (Charles Hawthorne)
Don't ever set yourself a stopping place, because maybe that is just the beginning. (John Held, Jr.)
Always quit for the day when you know what you want to do next. (Ernest Hemingway)
Better never begin than never make an end. (George Herbert)
When you've just done it, you're not sure. But when you've sat with it for a couple of hours and you don't want to do anything more to it, that's a great feeling. It can stand on its own two feet. (Damien Hirst)
My pictures really finish themselves. (Howard Hodgkin)
...letting well enough alone – which is the rule for grown artists only. (Winslow Homer)
Dry brush details are finishing touches that will make the painting come together. A contrasting light pigment works best in the sunlit areas. (William Hook)
...in the infinite space where the eye turns back to the eye, and the hand to the pen, where all we write is erased, even as we write it. For the book imperceptibly takes shape within the book we will never finish... There is my desert. (Edmond Jabes)
Sometimes the only way to finish a painting is to start again. The painting is an idea, and is not limited to that one and only canvas. Quickly move on. Sometimes good songs are made where old melodies leave off. (Melissa Jean)
Genius begins great works; labor alone finishes them. (Joseph Joubert)
It is easy to have a lot of paintings or projects hanging around that are 'almost done.' (Thomas Kinkade)
The best part is: I'm never finished! There are always new angles, new shadows, new lights... (Paula Bachtiger Kling)
There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning. (Louis L'Amour)
I don't like to start the next day on a half finished picture, so I push it. (Helmut Langeder)
When I'm finished, I always wonder what would have happened had I made different decisions along the way. (Brent R. Laycock)
I let myself have a night's sleep to work things out... Only the next day do I consider a new painting truly finished. (Jean-Francis Le Saint)
Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending. (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)
When a thing is not done, continuing to work is the strength; but when it is done, the strength lies in stopping. (Eric Maisel)
At a certain moment, the painting will shout or whisper, 'Leave me alone,' and we must hear, and agree, and give up our active role in the conversation and let the painting speak for itself. (Bonnie Mandoe)
Life, the Truth, and Being Free...
When the day has ended, dare to feel as you've done your best. / Dare to be the best you can - / At all times, Dare to be! (Steve Maraboli)
I must for myself insist that when finished, that is when all the parts are in place and are working, that now it has become an object and will therefore have its boundaries as definite as the prow, the stern, the sides, and bottom bound as a boat. (John Marin)
Perhaps I might be satisfied, momentarily, with a work finished at one sitting, but I would soon get bored looking at it; therefore, I prefer to continue working on it so that later I may recognize it as a work of my mind. (Henri Matisse)
It's not your painting anymore. It stopped being your painting the moment that you finished it. (Jeff Melvoin)
If I see an ending, I can work backwards. (Arthur Miller)
Once in a while I need to send a wet painting to a collector or a gallery and I do include a note that the painting should be varnished. I have also instructed a few gallery owners on the art of varnishing. (Stan Moeller)
It is difficult to stop in time because one gets carried away. But I have that strength; it is the only strength I have. (Claude Monet)
While adding the finishing touches to a painting might appear insignificant, it is much harder to do than one might suppose... (Claude Monet)
I say that whoever claims to have finished a canvas is terribly arrogant. (Claude Monet)
I'm never finished with my paintings; the further I get, the more I seek the impossible and the more powerless I feel. (Claude Monet)
I'm going to offer fifty francs to my landlord to see if I can have the oak tree's leaves removed... Isn't it the final straw to be finishing a winter landscape at this time of year... (Claude Monet)
I'm finished when I can't stand it anymore. (Ron Monsma)
The painterly painters labor under a disadvantage, since their idea of finish is not that of the general public. (Charles Movalli)
As a painting nears completion, I sometimes wonder when to stop... the best clue for me is when I start painting the next one in my head. (Kathryn Mullaney)
Did you stop because it was good enough, or could have done more – but then maybe ruined it too? Sometimes you finish because you've gone too far. (Bruce Nauman)
A painting is like the façade of a house... and you're like a janitor who goes around systematically trying to close all the windows and doors – but when you get to the top floor to close the last window, a wind blows open the one on the first landing. You rush down and close that one, and then one on the middle floor blows open and you rush to close that. But when you've closed all the entries to the house, then the painting is closed – not that it's finished, it's just that you can't enter it any longer. (Graham Nickson)
To know when to stop is of the same importance as to know when to begin. To continue merely automatically is as much a sin against the creative spirit as to start work without true inspiration. (Karl Nierendorf)
Either do not attempt at all, or go through with it. (Ovid)
Now that it is framed, we can appreciate it. (W. Parks)
When I paint a picture, there comes a moment when the signs and figures on it come alive and begin their own secret, independent life. Spying on their games, one starts to have a different attitude toward them and toward what remains to be done. (Yuril Petruk)
While sincerity and over-anxiety can spoil a picture, through superfluous elaboration and unnecessary correction, the carelessness that would leave it in an unfinished state is even more reprehensible. (Walter J. Phillips)
Woe to you the day it is said that you are finished! To finish a work? To finish a picture? What nonsense! To finish it means to be through with it, to kill it, to rid it of its soul – to give it its final blow; the most unfortunate one for the painter as well as for the picture. (Pablo Picasso)
I'd rather miss my train than not finish my pint. (Chris Pig)
Experimentalists never know when their work is finished. (Daniel H. Pink)
The foreground is just an access or entry. The less you do to a foreground, the better. (George Post)
All's well that ends well. (English proverb)
A painting is finished when the artist says it is finished. (Rembrandt)
A painting is complete when it has the shadows of a god. (Rembrandt)
I never think I have finished a nude until I think I could pinch it. (Pierre-Auguste Renoir)
However minutely labored the picture may be in the detail, the whole will have a false and even an unfinished appearance, at whatever distance, or in whatever light it can be shown. (Sir Joshua Reynolds)
A painting is completed in the last 15 minutes. (CJ Rider)
Can anything be sadder than work left unfinished? Yes; work never begun. (Christina Rossetti)
Perhaps the story you finish is never the one you begin. (Salman Rushdie)
We begin to see that the completion of an important project has every right to be dignified by a natural grieving process. Something that required the best of you has ended. You will miss it. (Anne Wilson Schaef)
The strength and clarity of the picture you envision at the start will tell you when you are done. You are finished when you have said what you wish to say, when nothing added can make it better. (Richard Schmid)
In your own life, you should take particular care with endings, for their color will forever tinge your memory of the entire relationship and your willingness to re-enter it. (Martin Seligman)
Signing a work of art represents an act of accountability. (Ian Semple)
Don't cry because it's over; smile because it happened. (Dr. Seuss)
Every time an artist finishes a work they care for, evil loses a small piece of its power. (Gabriel Shaffer)
I favor a picture which arrives at its destination without the evidence of a trying journey rather than one which shows the marks of battle. (Charles Sheeler)
My favorite painting is the one I just finished. (Tom Shropshire)
My mind sees my finished painting well before I actually finish. (Tom Shropshire)
The beginning of a painting is a very energized, exciting time, and it generates most of the energy I have. If I've gotten 75 per cent of it down, then it takes an effort to really get up that kind of energy to finish it in the same way it's begun. (Burton Silverman)
In painting, the gravest immorality is to try to finish what isn't well begun. But a picture that is well begun may be left off at any point. Look at Cezanne's water colours! (Matthew Smith)
If you've worked over all of your drawing, it should finish itself – often when you least expect it. (Stan Smith)
There is no artist's studio, even a mediocre one, in which a study may not be found superior to his finished works. (Alfred Stevens)
No painting stops with itself, is complete of itself. It is a continuation of previous paintings and is renewed in successive ones... (Clyfford Still)
Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end. (Igor Stravinsky)
You've finished that painting, so now what? Five things you should do after you finish a painting: 1) paint another piece 2) paint another one 3) and another 4) repeat step one 5) repeat this for the rest of your life. (Kyle V. Thomas)
I simply could not stop - I had to finish it. (Alton S. Tobey)
The way you end your story is important. It's important that we choose love over fear, because love is the answer. (Guillermo del Toro)
These people annoy me. They want me to finish things. But I see them in such a way and paint them accordingly. Look, it is so easy to finish things. (Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec)
Having seen and felt the end, you have willed the means to the realization of the end. (Thomas Troward)
It's absurd to talk about paintings that you haven't finished. (Cy Twombly)
The minute you finish a piece, get rid of it! If it's bad, it'll drag you down, if it's great, you'll just sit there looking at it. (Author unknown)
I can't bear to finish things, beyond a certain point they get heavy. There's something so dead about a finished painting. (John Updike)
Try to finish your painting while you are still excited about it. Spend too much time, you loose interest, and the picture begins to fall apart. (Van Waldron)
Stop when finished. (Frank Webb)
I often wonder, if there were no deadlines, would anything ever get ended? (Judith Weir)
I paint very directly. I go from top to bottom. When I get to the floor, the painting is finished. (Neil Welliver)
A picture is finished when all trace of the means used to bring about the end has disappeared. (James Abbott McNeill Whistler)
A common malady among artists is we sometimes don't know when to quit. Consequently we can ruin a good painting by overworking it or by leaving it too soon. There's a fine line there somewhere and it's hard to know when you've crossed it. (Lesley White)
Varnishing is the only artistic process with which Royal Academicians are thoroughly familiar. (Oscar Wilde)
One of Cezanne's unfinished paintings... appears to be a completed work even though only a few strokes of paint have been put down. My methods are similar... I expect each of my paintings to appear whole in every stage. (Christopher Willard)
I believe an artist's duty is to make a painting so complete that when it's framed and put on a wall it seems to say, 'I'm all there is. There is no more.' (Robert E. Wood)
- b.AD 61 d.AD 112, Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus...
Unfinished paintings are more admired than the finished because the artist's actual thoughts are left visible. (Pliny the Younger)
- b.AD 61 d.AD 112, Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus...
Too much polishing weakens rather than improves a work. (Pliny the Younger)
When you're ready to stop, stop. If you have presented all the facts and made the point you want to make, look for the nearest exit. (William K. Zinsser)
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