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Photography produces pleasure by simplicity. I see something special and show it to the camera. A picture is produced. The moment is held until someone sees it. Then it is theirs. (Sam Abell)
It's easy to paint a thousand points of light with a thousand brushstrokes. It's much more difficult - and infinitely more eloquent - to paint a thousand points of light with only one hundred strokes. (Mitchell Albala)
I like to have a thing suggested rather than told in full. When every detail is given the mind rests satisfied and the imagination loses the desire to use its own wings. (Thomas Bailey Aldrich)
My motto has always been to keep it simple: a few colors, a paintbrush, and a surface to work on. (Candida Alvarez)
The great artist is the simplifier. (Henri-Frederic Amiel)
Faithfully copying every detail you see doesn't work – too much detail destroys the illusion. (Anonymous)
Man's striving for order, of which art is but one manifestation, derives from a similar universal tendency throughout the organic world; it is also paralleled by, and perhaps derived from, the striving towards the state of simplest structure in physical systems. (Rudolf Arnheim)
It's a matter of simplifying. Practice removing extraneous ideas... until you have only what's needed to express a simple thought. (Leo Babauta)
The simplest things are often the truest. (Richard Bach)
Simplicity is nature's first step, and the last of art. (Philip James Bailey)
The simple thing is the greatest thing... People are only rarely aware of this when they pray. (Hans Urs von Balthasar)
Simplicity before understanding is simplistic; simplicity after understanding is simple. (Edward de Bono)
Simplicity is not an objective in art, but one achieves simplicity despite one's self by entering into the real sense of things. (Constantin Brancusi)
O, how much simpler things would be / If eyes could paint or brush could see. (Robert Brault)
There is in art the notion of less is more, which is to say, you don't torture a painting that has already confessed. (Robert Brault)
My brother, a nuclear physicist, taught me... that you can really tell if someone knows their stuff by how simply they can explain a complex situation. (Peter Bray)
-Andrea del Sarto, 1855...
Less is more. (Robert Browning)
An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way. (Charles Bukowski)
What is important is not the motif itself, so much as your ability to imagine, speculate, organize, and above all, to simplify. (Richard Busey)
The true work of art is always on the human scale. It is essentially the one that says, 'less.' (Albert Camus)
I want to balance simplicity with sophistication, the crude with the elegant, the traditional with the contemporary. (Bruno Capolongo)
Visual artists choreograph dances for the eyes, guiding visual journeys in specific ways. But when presented with little or nothing, the journeys of the eyes become erratic and finally still their restless searching. The eye and mind and heart grow quiet, come to rest, and begin to understand their own functioning more deeply. (John Paul Caponigro)
It is by great economy of means that one arrives at simplicity of expression. (Henri Cartier-Bresson)
Art, it seems to me, should simplify. It is very near the whole of the higher artistic process; finding what conventions of form and what detail one can do without and yet preserve the spirit of the whole. (Willa Cather)
Brevity is the sister of talent. (Anton Chekhov)
A sign of a very skillful artist is one who uses very few strokes to express the feelings. If you can make a bird look really alive... that's the sign of a true artist. (Nancy Chen)
The modern world... has no notion except that of simplifying something by destroying nearly everything. (G. K. Chesterton)
Simplicity is cosmic, because it places our life on the same scale as all life, of innocent Nature herself, who is all-powerful. (Deepak Chopra)
The simple things are also the most extraordinary things, and only the wise can see them. (Paulo Coelho)
-The Selfish Gene...
In the beginning was simplicity. (Richard Dawkins)
To synthesize is not necessarily to simplify in the sense of suppressing certain parts of the object: it is to simplify in the sense of rendering intelligible. It is, in short, to put in hierarchic order: to set each picture to a single rhythm, to a dominant; it is sacrifice, to subordinate - to generalize. (Maurice Denis)
Sometimes less is more. Our quest for more, then, keeps us from it. (Jan Denise)
Simplicity demands our deepest attention in order to be appreciated. (William DeRaymond)
Complicated is easy. It always seems to me that the simpler my paintings are, the better they feel. How much information do we need to convey a feeling? Not a heck of a lot. (Jack Dickerson)
Simplicity is creative in and of itself. (Michael Duncan)
As I grew older, I realized that it was much better to insist on the genuine forms of nature, for simplicity is the greatest adornment of art. (Albrecht Durer)
In mathematics the complicated things are reduced to simple things. So it is in painting. (Thomas Eakins)
Out of clutter, find simplicity. (Albert Einstein)
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler. (Albert Einstein)
The most important thing for poets to do is to write as little as possible. (T. S. Eliot)
We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end; which stands related to all things; which is the mean of many extremes. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
The line of beauty is the line of perfect economy. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
To have anything else in there is really just an interference. (Paul Emsley)
'Beautiful' will come from color composition and combination, depth and richness of color as well as overall design. 'Simplicity' will come from depth of colors and layers and a minimally 'cluttered' surface. (Bela Fidel)
To be simple is no small matter. (Gustave Flaubert)
Life is simplified when there is one center; one reason, one motivation, one direction and purpose. (Jean Fleming)
Simplicity, carried to an extreme, becomes elegance. (Jon Franklin)
It was so simple to paint things as I saw them; to put without special calculation a red close to a blue. (Paul Gauguin)
How difficult it is to be simple. (Vincent van Gogh)
Keep it simple. (Irwin Greenberg)
My book has a very simple surface, but there are layers of irony and paradox all the way through it. (Mark Haddon)
Simplicity captures and expresses the essence of the subject. (Hap Hagood)
Simplify until one brushstroke represents a million pine needles. (Andrew Hamilton)
A reaction, to be pleasant, must be simple. (Marsden Hartley)
Painting is just like making an after-dinner speech. If you want to be remembered, say one thing and stop. (Charles Hawthorne)
To see things simply is the hardest thing in the world. (Charles Hawthorne)
My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way. (Ernest Hemingway)
If the artist's will is not strong he will see all kinds of unessential things. (Robert Henri)
You can paint an entire painting with one stroke. (Quang Ho)
Anything simple always interests me. (David Hockney)
To be simple is not always as easy as it seems. (Ferdinand Hodler)
The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak. (Hans Hofmann)
Never put more than two waves in a picture; it's fussy. (Winslow Homer)
Strive for simplicity! Don't have the face a checkerboard of tints! Use such colors as nature uses, but not try to keep them distinct! Your work may be called monotonous, but one tone is better than many which do not harmonize. (William Morris Hunt)
Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it's worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains. (Steve Jobs)
The whole essence of good drawing - and of good thinking, perhaps - is to work a subject down to the simplest form possible and still have it believable for what it is meant to be. (Chuck Jones)
If only simplicity were not the most difficult of all things. It consists of watching objectively the development of any fragment of fantasy. (Carl Gustav Jung)
By using patches of color and tone it is possible to capture every natural impression in the simplest way, freshly and immediately. (Paul Klee)
Reduction! One wants to say more than nature and one makes the impossible mistake of wanting to say it with more means than she, instead of fewer. (Paul Klee)
Does this spark joy? If it does, keep it. If not, dispose of it. This is not only the simplest but also the most accurate yardstick by which to judge. Keep only those things that speak to your heart. Then take the plunge and discard all the rest. (Marie Kondo)
Pare down to the essence, but don't remove the poetry. (Leonard Koren)
It has taken me 20 years to eliminate the unnecessary elements from my work. (Andrew Lakey)
-on DNA...
Suddenly it was clear to me that all the beautiful complexity of life had simplicity at its core. (Eric Lander)
When the subject is strong, simplicity is the only way to treat it. (Jacob Lawrence)
I like to put my work as simple as possible. Even if I put a piece of grass, even if only one dragonfly is on the grass, you have to imagine the essence of how the dragonfly lands... (Ming Leung)
To complicate is easy. To simplify is difficult. (Alyson Long)
By painting a thing as simply as possible, you can get to the spirit of it, and then subject and artist reveal themselves to each other. (David Lussier)
-sketching at Lake O'Hara...
Got up during the night to see the moonlight on Mt. Lefroy. Clear and fine. All detail simplified - few tones and a rare transparent effect, no strong contrast, three or four values, the lake only slightly darker than the shore. (J. E. H. MacDonald)
The need to simplify has become almost a mantra which few question. (Arthur Maderson)
Leave things out. Just don't leave out the chocolate when making chocolate cake. (Bonnie Mandoe)
With greater completeness and abstraction, I have attained a form filtered to its essentials. (Henri Matisse)
Educators take something simple and make it complicated. Communicators take something complicated and make it simple. (John C. Maxwell)
Creativity is more than just being different. Anybody can plan weird; that's easy. What's hard is to be as simple as Bach. Making the simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity. (Charles Mingus)
My tendency towards bareness and simplification has been practiced in three fields: modeling, colors, and the figuration of the personages. (Joan Miro)
I always feel the need to achieve the maximum of intensity with the minimum of means. This is what has led me to give my painting an ever sparer character. (Joan Miro)
You cannot do silhouettes in fantasy. Ah, no, you must be faithful. It is, the art, a, what you call, paradox. It is always that you must be simple, and then, if you are simple, you will stimulate the imagination of the observer. (Ugo Mochi)
I always work with one special rule in mind: simplification without distortion. (Desmond Morris)
Simplicity of shape does not necessarily equate with simplicity of experience. (Robert Morris)
Simplicity lies not in omission, but in synthesis. (Koloman Moser)
I will eventually simplify my style, but I know it will be a gradual, unconscious metamorphosis, rather than an affectation. (Kathryn Mullaney)
The simpler the better. (Michael Nevin)
I'm interested in locating the holy grail of the minimum means to express the most complex ideas. (Ben Nicholson)
You're trying to make your painting too complicated. Paintings get complicated all by themselves. (Toni Onley)
Keep the statement major. Don't be seduced by the minor. Make the little things wait their turn. (Grace Paleg)
I love eliminating unnecessary details and distilling it down to what it is that I'm attracted to, whether it's lights and darks, shadows, contrast between large and small, near and far, leading the eye through the painting. (Ross Penhall)
The painter who is so enamoured by the beauties of the parts of a landscape, that he strives to represent all, cannot succeed. His picture will be an arrangement of a series of portraits of things without unity... There must be variety and contrast, but in measured doses. (Walter J. Phillips)
The most interesting studio work, and perhaps the most practicable, is painting from pencil sketches and notes... It ensures the elimination of all facts but those essential to the effect. (Walter J. Phillips)
There is nothing quite so complicated as simplicity. (Charles Poore)
There is a certain majesty in simplicity which is far above all the quaintness of wit. (Alexander Pope)
Minute and elaborately finished pictures never strongly impress the mind, and are but mere curiosities to gratify persons insensible to higher excellencies. (Samuel Prout)
Simplicity can only be achieved by forethought, planning and insight. It actually takes much more effort to create a bold simple painting, than to endlessly worry and poke a picture to death. (Ron Ranson)
The tendency to keep adding things to a painting when it's not quite there yet is the road to perdition. (Liz Reday)
-on writing instructional books...
I don't think the books have affected my painting, but they do show me how important brevity is. Brevity is important in writing and in painting. The two cross over, and I try to keep them both as simple as possible. (Charles Reid)
Certainly, nothing can be more simple than monotony. (Sir Joshua Reynolds)
Grandeur of effect is produced by two different ways which seem entirely opposed to each other. One is by reducing the colors to little more than chiaroscuro... and the other, by making the colors very distinct and forcible... but still, the presiding principle of both those manners is simplicity. (Sir Joshua Reynolds)
We can't help but simplify things because we can't hope to paint every leaf, but we must try to overcome the tendency to over-state. (Richard Robinson)
For effective communication, use brevity. Jesus said, 'Follow me.' Now that's brief! He could be brief because of all that he was that he didn't have to say. (Jim Rohn)
Mystery can be conveyed profoundly through simplicity. Fewer lines means choosing a direction whether consciously or unconsciously and believing in it for at least as long as it takes to see it through. (Linda Saccoccio)
There's no such thing as simple. Simple is hard. (Martin Scorsese)
Rothko had nowhere to go. If he had been able to complicate his image rather than simplify it to the extreme, his art could have soared in new directions, but the image which had become his trademark was inescapable. (Lee Seldes)
To successfully simplify the subject of a painting is to comprehend its essence. (Ian Semple)
My ability to see the world in terms of abstract shapes and patterns of color and value is due to my work on location, where I quickly learned that I must simplify 'things' into 'shapes.' (Randall Sexton)
Brevity is the soul of wit. (William Shakespeare)
The big, simple shapes are the key to a good painting. It's surprising how little you have to put in to make the viewer know what you are trying to represent. (Marilyn Simandle)
Simplicity doesn't mean to live in misery and poverty. You have what you need, and you don't want to have what you don't need. (Charan Singh)
The motif must always be set down in a simple way, easily grasped and understood by the beholder. By the elimination of superfluous detail, the spectator should be led along the road that the artist indicates to him, and from the first be made to notice what the artist has felt. (Alfred Sisley)
The machines that are first invented to perform any particular movement are always the most complex, and succeeding artists generally discover that, with fewer wheels the same effects may be more easily produced. (Adam Smith)
Art should take what is complex and render it simply. It takes a lot of skill, human understanding, stamina, courage, energy, and heart to do that. (Anna Deavere Smith)
One of the proven methods of simplifying work is to focus on the essentials of the composition and ask the following questions – Why did I choose this subject? Is it a particular aspect of the light that appeals? Is it colour relationship? Repetition of shapes? (Marion Starr)
The best works are often those with the fewest and simplest elements... until you look at them a little more, and things start to happen. (Clyfford Still)
Lust for Life...
How difficult it is to be simple. (Irving Stone)
Painting with the minimum number of colors to achieve maximum result is a sign of sophistication and compositional discipline. (Zoltan Szabo)
As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler. (Henry David Thoreau)
What I wish to do is make painting objective, to bring it back to its source – where only painting remains, emptied of all extraneous matter – to the point at which painting is pure sensation...to say as much as possible with as few elements as possible. (Claude Tousignant)
To suggest is to create, to state is to destroy. (Author unknown)
When a thought is too weak to be expressed simply, it should be rejected. (Marquis de Vauvenargues)
At first glance, simplicity can be deceiving. (Milos Vujasinovic)
Here is the Divine Dichotomy... The way to 'get there' is to 'be there.' Just be where you choose to get. It's that simple. (Neale Donald Walsch)
Simplicity is the glory of expression. (Walt Whitman)
Say less, do more. (Leonard Wolf)
Ever Simpler but from a Complex Perspective. (Peter Wolf)
The more one learns how to paint the simpler vision, like peeling away layers of extra baggage and preconceptions, one begins to arrive at a deep and personal encounter with creation. (John H. Wurdeman)
When you lose your simplicity, you lose your drama. (Andrew Wyeth)
It's easier to cover the canvas in a smaller painting, and a single paint stroke can have a lot of importance. The difficult part is keeping things simple and avoiding overworking the piece with too much information. (Dan Young)
How do we find simplicity and direct purpose in the midst of chaotic communication? By learning to subtract the distractions, by shaking the dust off the crystal, by seeing through the invisible, briefly, focusing on the focus point... (Mona Youssef)
Writing improves in direct ratio to the number of things we can keep out of it that shouldn't be there. (William K. Zinsser)
- On Writing Well...
Simplify, simplify. (William K. Zinsser)
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