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Sometimes when I'm having a colour moment I think to myself, okay what would be the most disgusting colour to add here? Sometimes that 'disgusting' can turn out to be 'surprising' and 'completely gorgeous.' (Angela A'Court)

There are always a myriad of colour choices that will work in any situation, as long as the tonal value is appropriate. (Gaye Adams)

Colors speak all languages. (Joseph Addison)

Used throughout a room, orange can become surprisingly neutral, and yet it can be bright and mood-enhancing. (Jonathan Adler)

I advise students on the subject of color as follows: If it looks good enough to eat, use it. (Abe Ajay)

Colours are brighter when the mind is open. (Adriana Alarcon)

A color strategy is like a recipe for harmony - a set of color relationships that are proven to work well and can be used as a formula for building our color composition. (Mitchell Albala)

Any ground subtracts its own hue from the colors which it carries and therefore influences. (Josef Albers)

We never really perceive what color is physically. (Josef Albers)

Color is like cooking. The cook puts in more or less salt, that's the difference! (Josef Albers)

If one says 'red' - the name of color - and there are fifty people listening, it can be expected that there will be fifty reds in their minds. And one can be sure that all these reds will be very different. (Josef Albers)

The picture will have charm when each colour is very unlike the one next to it. (Leon Battista Alberti)

It seems obvious that colors vary according to lights, because when any color is placed in the shade, it appears to be different from the same color which is located in light. Shade makes color dark, whereas light makes color bright where it strikes. (Leon Battista Alberti)

A color is as strong as the impression it creates. (Ivan Albright)

I can smell it already, what color I have on my palette... (Bill Alexander)

The world is your kaleidoscope, and the varying combinations of colors which at every succeeding moment it presents to you are the exquisitely adjusted pictures of your ever-moving thoughts. (James Allen)

It's hard to live your life in color, and tell the truth in black and white. (Gregg Allman)

- What Color is Love?...
Color is something we see with our eyes, but love is something we see with our heart. (Joan Walsh Anglund)

Reds, yellows and oranges conjure up sunlight and fire, while the blues and blue-greens evoke snow and ice, sea, sky and moonlight. (Anonymous)

Color is the fruit of life. (Guillaume Apollinaire)

I use very little red. I use blue, yellow, a little green, but especially... black, white and grey. There is a certain need in me for communication with human beings. Black and white is writing. (Hans Jean Arp)

Did the poet use red to symbolize blood? Anger? Lust? Or is the wheelbarrow simply red because red sounded better than black? (Jay Asher)

Every time you shift to a different color or different hue you are creating interest. It's a subtle thing but it builds content. (Clyde Aspevig)

Painting is a mosaic of colors weaved into a seamless whole. (Igor Babailov)

You don't need a uniform color: We used a mixture of brick red, browns and grays, and then threw in seashells, branches and various types of rock, so our walls ended up looking like cave paintings! (Randy Bachman)

A variation of edges, along with the proper value, allows the artist to draw attention to or away from different areas of the painting... Likewise, use of color draws attention to an area... (Kenn Backhaus)

All colours will agree in the dark. (Francis Bacon)

I want to return colours to Gaza, which knows neither colours nor peace. (Nidaa Badwan)

My father pointed to the moon and asked me what color it was. I couldn't tell. So he told me to look at the horizon and then glance back quickly at the moon. Then I saw it: it was pale green! (Alden Baker)

Purplish brown? Let's agree it / is a color so bad we all flee it / it has no good use / so let's name it Puce / from the sound we make when we see it. (Darby Bannard)

Let the blue sky meet the blue sea and all is blue for a time. (Moncy Barbour)

The term Red Shift has been used by astronomers since, early in this century, they noticed that the light spectra of distant galaxies shifted towards the red end of the spectrum. I suggest that as memories about events recede, their 'color' shifts towards the warm tones. (Elizabeth Barton)

A dominant colour possesses tremendous power in making a painting unique. (Mary Bassi)

Chromophobia is perhaps only chromophilia without the colour. (David Batchelor)

Colour is uncontainable. It effortlessly reveals the limits of language and evades our best attempts to impose a rational order on it... To work with colour is to become acutely aware of the insufficiency of language and theory – which is both disturbing and pleasurable. (David Batchelor)

Color... thinks by itself, independently of the object it clothes. (Charles Baudelaire)

Pure draughtsmen are philosophers and dialecticians. Colourists are epic poets. (Charles Baudelaire)

- The Wizard of Oz...
Whenever I feel blue, I start breathing again. (L. Frank Baum)

You put down one color and it calls for an answer. You have to look at it like a melody. (Romare Bearden)

It is not by his mixing and choosing, but by the shapes of his colors, and the combination of those shapes, that we recognize the colorist. Color becomes significant only when it becomes form. (Clive Bell)

The Synchromists extended and intensified Cezanne's color-form theories, in which form was seen as a derivative of the organization of color planes, by abandoning completely the usual colors of nature, replacing them with highly saturated spectral colors and extending them into an area of purely 'abstract' form. (Thomas Hart Benton)

When infinite colors exist between the dark and the light, who among us would choose to see only black and white? (Gene Bertsche)

eloquence, n. The art of orally persuading fools that white is the color that it appears to be. It includes the gift of making any color appear white. (Ambrose Bierce)

Colouring does not depend on where the colours are put, but on where the lights and darks are put, and all depends on form and outline, on where that is put. (William Blake)

I always lay out my color in the same way so I don't have to stop and search for the color I want. I press the paint out in long ribbons rather than blobs. It keeps the paint cleaner and less contaminated by other colors. (Linda Blondheim)

It doesn't matter whether the overall feeling of the color in a painting is warm or cool, it just shouldn't try to be both. (Marion Boddy-Evans)

All students need to know about color is the basic color wheel and complimentary colors. There are many books on color theory; do not waste your time and money. (Sergei Bongart)

It is still color; it is not yet light. (Pierre Bonnard)

You reason color more than you reason drawing... Color has a logic as severe as form. (Pierre Bonnard)

I saw a sunset in Queretaro that seemed to reflect the colour of a rose in Bengal. (Jorge Luis Borges)

Here and there one sees the blush of wild rose haws or the warmth of orange fruit on the bittersweet, and back in the woods is the occasional twinkle of partridge berries. But they are the gem stones, the rare decorations which make the grays, the browns and the greens seem even more quiet, more completely at rest. (Hal Borland)

The colour blue - that is my colour - and the colour blue means you have left the drabness of day-to-day reality to be transported into - not a world of fantasy, it's not a world of fantasy - but a world of freedom where you can say what you like and what you don't like. This has been expressed forever by the colour blue, which is really sky blue. (Louise Bourgeois)

-on Robert Genn...
You, Robert, are a deep terracotta red. (Tania Bourne)

If you use colour carefully, that is, placing a softer 'off' colour next to pure colour, it helps add the magic touch to your work - and that special look. (Gail Boyle)

One has to arrive at a specific temperature, at which the objects become malleable. (Georges Braque)

Colour could give rise to sensations which would interfere with our conception of space. (Georges Braque)

You put a blob of yellow here, and another at the further edge of the canvas: straight away a rapport is established between them. Colour acts in the way that music does... (Georges Braque)

On the sixth day, God created the artist, realizing no doubt that He had far from exhausted the uses of color. (Robert Brault)

All colors are primary to my view of the world. (Bob Brendle)

I love hot red and yet I am always in drab gray clothing. I use green sparingly in my paintings yet a large field of green grass brings tears to my eyes. Still, it all makes sense. It is a love of color and what it does for our lives. (Harley Brown)

-describing a minimalist colorist painter...
He is all palette, and no painting. (Peter William Brown)

'Yes,' I answered you last night; / 'No,' this morning, sir, I say. / Colours seen by candle-light / Will not look the same by day. (Elizabeth Barrett Browning)

For a warm earthy palette, add Raw Umber, Cadmium Red Light, Burnt Umber and Olive Green. (Lisa Buck-Goldstein)

An artist is either good at color or good at value but rarely good at both. I focus on the tonal range, the dark-light effects, rather than the full color range of bright colors. I just don't know what to do with all those cadmiums. (Thomas S. Buechner)

Purple does something strange to me. (Charles Bukowski)

- b.1803 d.1873...
The learned compute that seven hundred and seven millions of millions of vibrations have to penetrate the eye before the eye can distinguish the tints of a violet. (Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton)

It's funny how the colors of the real world only seem really real when you watch them on a screen. (Anthony Burgess)

Visit a green place to understand green. (Susan Easton Burns)

I like a colorful sock. I'm a sock man. (George H.W. Bush)

Color is a powerful physical, biological, and psychological force. When less color and less intense color is present, trace amounts and subtle differences become highly significant and are strongly felt. (John Paul Caponigro)

Color has always been easy. There are times when I don't even look at what I'm reaching for until it is on the picture. (Lyle Carbajal)

Getting that blood red in the nose and the cheeks and the ears that stands in contrast to the greens or the neutral colors, that's the dance of flesh tone. (Mark Carder)

Good colour really means good taste; and 'powerful' colour means a reserve, to give a climax its full force, and not 'red, white, and blue all over. (John F. Carlson)

When painting the faces of young persons... use the yolk of the egg of a city hen, because they have lighter yolks than those of country hens. (Cennino Cennini)

-on Eugene Delacroix...
His is the greatest palette of France and no one beneath our skies possessed to a greater extent than he both the serene and the pathetic, the vibration of color. We all paint through him. (Paul Cezanne)

There is no model; there is only color. (Paul Cezanne)

Nature is more depth than surface. Hence the need to introduce into our light vibrations represented by the reds and yellows, a sufficient amount of blue to give the impression of air. (Paul Cezanne)

When the color achieves richness, the form attains its fullness also. (Paul Cezanne)

-to Camille Pissarro...
The sun is so terrific here that is seems to me as if the objects were silhouetted not only in black and white, but in blue, red, brown and violet. I may be mistaken, but this seems to me to be the opposite of modelling. (Paul Cezanne)

There is a logic of colors, and it is with this alone, and not with the logic of the brain, that the painter should conform. (Paul Cezanne)

Some colors are very difficult to render, and you must compensate to get the color you want on the screen. (Claude Chabrol)

Color is all. When color is right, form is right. Color is everything, color is vibration like music; everything is vibration. (Marc Chagall)

I have always painted pictures where human love floods my colors. (Marc Chagall)

Women think of all colors except the absence of color. I have said that black has it all. White too. Their beauty is absolute. It is the perfect harmony. (Coco Chanel)

Regarding black, even black people are not black. They are simply way more colourful than white people. (Luke Charchuk)

Who told you that one paints with colors? One makes use of colors, but one paints with emotions. (Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin)

You must try to match your colors as nearly as you can to those you see before you, and you must study the effects of light and shade on nature's own hues and tints. (William Merritt Chase)

In order to change a color it is enough to change the color of its background. (Michel Eugene Chevreul)

It almost always happens that true, but exaggerated, coloring is more agreeable than absolute coloring. (Michel Eugene Chevreul)

I never met a color I didn't like. (Dale Chihuly)

Color is one of the greatest properties of glass and is more intense in glass than any other material. (Dale Chihuly)

The theory of not mixing black to darken colors really needs to be tossed out the window. Used sparingly, black can create wonderful, muted colors. (Steve Childs)

Being a true colorist means demonstrating discipline by first assessing all the options laid out before you, and then giving equal regard to hues beyond the brightest in your quiver. (Scott L. Christensen)

My own palette has been reduced to three primaries and white. I usually add a couple of grays as values to modify color and tone. (Scott L. Christensen)

-on trying to paint a pale blue sky...
I cannot pretend to be impartial about the colors. I rejoice with the brilliant ones, and am genuinely sorry for the poor browns. (Winston Churchill)

At one side of the palette there is white, at the other black; and neither is ever used neat. (Winston Churchill)

Today we need colour more than at any time in history. Blacks and grays, both depressing, should be replaced in clothes, offices and homes with new colours that give inspiration, tranquility and happiness. (Linda Clark)

All color is no color. (Sir Kenneth Clark)

Fine colour implies a unified relationship, in which each part is subordinate to the whole, and the transitions between them are felt to be as precious and beautiful as the colours themselves. In fact, the colours themselves must be continuously modified and broken as part of the transition. (Sir Kenneth Clark)

I only use three primaries, so the nice thing is I can't have favorite colors. (Chuck Close)

At the same time that I'm finding the color world I want, I'm also trying to make the imagery, you know, by the nature of the strokes themselves. (Chuck Close)

The sky is the soul of all scenery. It makes the earth lovely at sunrise and splendid at sunset. In the one it breathes over the earth a crystal-like ether, in the other a liquid gold. (Thomas Cole)

There are connoisseurs of blue just as there are connoisseurs of wine. (Sidonie Gabrielle Colette)

- A Manual of Oil Painting, 1890...
Economy should be studiously avoided in the setting of the palette; there is nothing more likely to give a bad style in oil painting than insufficiency of colours. (John Collier)

Colour can be the true main thing in art that is widely valued – even valued by the maker of the art – for other meanings. (Matthew Collings)

Color is the pulse of the painting. (Michele Cooper)

The objects in front of you are flowers, but the subject is color. (Michele Cooper)

Such lovely warmth of thought and delicacy of colour are beyond all praise, and equally beyond all thanks! (Marie Corelli)

What, you haven't any ivory-black on your palette? If you think you are going to make black with blue and red, I can't have you in my class. You might stir up trouble with such ideas. (Fernand Corman)

-Roycrofter's Little Journeys, Eminent Artists, 1902...
Heavens, how charming it is! There is now in the sky only the soft vaporous color of pale citron - the last reflection of the sun which plunges into the dark blue of the night, going from green tones to a pale turquoise of an unheard-of fineness and a fluid delicacy quite indescribable... (Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot)

-on the thick impasto of Ernest Lawson...
A palette of crushed jewels... (Critic)

Post-modernists... see color as an ambivalence, to coat a surface, denying its purist reality. (Theo Crosby)

Color is the language of the poets. It is astonishingly lovely. To speak it is a privilege. (Keith Crown)

Anything can be any color at any time depending on what color everything else is at the time. (Keith Crown)

A red apple isn't red, nor the lemon yellow. The sky is seldom blue, only when it isn't... (Keith Crown)

Everything utilitarian needs a little red edge. (Reno Dakota)

After learning to see color as value, the next step is to see color as color. (Don Dame)

If you look closely at any face, you'll start to see that different areas of the flesh tones are tinged with four other colors – red, green, purple and yellow. (Doug Dawson)

What a horrible thing yellow is. (Edgar Degas)

The sea a dark greenish blue like a fig. (Eugene Delacroix)

The more an object is polished or brilliant, the less you see its own color and the more it becomes a mirror reflecting the color of its surroundings. (Eugene Delacroix)

Remember the enemy of all painting is gray: a painting will almost always appear grayer than it is, on account of its oblique position under the light. (Eugene Delacroix)

Not only can color, which is under fixed laws, be taught like music, but it is easier to learn than drawing, whose elaborate principles cannot be taught. (Eugene Delacroix)

All painting worth its name, unless one is talking about black and white, must include the idea of color as one of its necessary supports, in the same way that it includes chiaroscuro, proportion, and perspective. (Eugene Delacroix)

Draughtsmen may be made, but colourists are born. (Eugene Delacroix)

Everyone knows that yellow, orange, and red suggest ideas of joy and plenty. (Eugene Delacroix)

I can paint you the skin of Venus with mud, provided you let me surround it as I will. (Eugene Delacroix)

He who knows how to appreciate colour relationships, the influence of one colour on another, their contrasts and dissonances, is promised an infinitely diverse imagery. (Sonia Delaunay)

I have always wanted my colours to sing. (Paul Delvaux)

Flowers and flames. And color. Color as color, not as volume or light – only as color. (Charles Demuth)

-on Georgia O'Keeffe...
The last mad throb of red just as it turns green; the ultimate shriek of orange calling all the blues of heaven for relief and support... each color almost regains the fun it must have felt within itself on forming the first rainbow. (Charles Demuth)

-on a frieze by Tintoretto...
There were apples painted in pale green and bright red on a ground of emerald green leaves. It is all colour. One might say it was a Cezanne. (Maurice Denis)

Every so often change your palette. Introduce new colours and discard others. You will gain knowledge of colour mixing and your work will have added variety. (Kenneth Denton)

We were always intoxicated with color, with words that speak of color, and with the sun that makes colors live. (Andre Derain)

Ah, Chardin, what you grind on your palette is not this color or that... but the very substance of things. You dip your brush in air and light and spread them on your canvas. (Denis Diderot)

Missing in a painting of compatible color are exciting interactions. (Jeanne Dobie)

I often collect small twiggs, leaves or rocks and have learned a lot about seeing color by doing this. The twigs vary in color from olive green to gold to burgundy and I've only ever seen a few brown ones. Even the needles on a spruce tree have a wonderful range of colours and colour is what inspires me to do a painting. (Lorna Dockstader)

They call me mellow yellow... (Donovan)

Blue is the only color which maintains its own character in all its tones... it will always stay blue; whereas yellow is blackened in its shades, and fades away when lightened; red when darkened becomes brown, and diluted with white is no longer red, but another color – pink. (Raoul Dufy)

All the best artists have shown that the greatest achievement in the production of fine color is the concealment of pigments, and not the parade of them; and we may say the same of execution. (Asher B. Durand)

Keep your shadows consistent. Premix your colors and then, later, if you want to come in and do a little tweekin', to try to make it a little bit more interesting and show a little bit of reflection into the shadow color, you can do that, but do it [with] subtlety. (Daniel Edmondson)

In Autumn you can take one maple leaf and see almost all the colours of the rainbow in it – although you would need your imagination to see blue. (Dorthe Eisenhardt)

The range in brightness from the purple glow [of the sunset] to the dark sky above is too great for most films, and naturally it is beyond the range of printed pictures. (James Elkins)

Color is determined by amount, application and placement. (Charles Emerson)

The sun rose brilliantly above, reflecting the hues of red, orange, lavender and blue in the pond before me. The viridian shadows changed to lemon yellow and lime green as the light washed the morning and I tried in vain to save a piece of this miracle on canvas. (Mary Erickson)

-on the colour wheel...
Creators of computer graphics are ahead of painters... Programs such as Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop have 'color pickers' that present you with a screen full of continuously blended color from which to choose... (Patrick Fanning)

Artists can colour the sky red because they know it's blue. Those of us who aren't artists must colour things the way they really are or people might think we're stupid. (Jules Feiffer)

Colour is, on the evidence of language alone, very bound up with the feelings. (Joanna Field)

If Bacchus ever had a color he could claim for his own, it should surely be the shade of tannin on drunken lips, of John Keat's 'purple-stained mouth,' or perhaps even of Homer's dangerously wine-dark sea. (Victoria Finlay)

- Jewels: A Secret History...
In precious opals there might be a dash of red here, a seductive swirl of blue there, and in the center, perhaps, a flirtatious glance of green. But each stone flickers with a unique fire and a good opal is one with an opinion of its own. (Victoria Finlay)

Never has a pigment been better named than ultramarine blue. Fashionable, even today, in its nomenclature! It is ultra in every way. (Karen Fitzgerald)

Any color, so long as it's black. (Henry Ford)

It must be vivid. Extended in space and time, the dots accrue, giving back pathways, constellations, geometries, and at last, as the white ground of the canvas is overcome, unforeseen color sensations. (Andrew Forge)

I'm trying to get to the core of what I'm about, in colour. I'm mining the colour to get to the core of a personal colour experience. (Jonathan Forrest)

Color is born of the interpenetration of light and dark. (Sam Francis)

I don't start with a color order, but find the colors as I go. (Helen Frankenthaler)

I used to try to work from a given, made shape. But I'm less involved now with the shape as such. I'm much more apt to be surprised that pink and green within these shapes are doing something. (Helen Frankenthaler)

My emotions are seriously stirred and twisted, but I will not let the dark void pull me in... the colors will show me the way... (Eric Frantz)

Full, saturated colours have an emotional significance I want to avoid. (Lucian Freud)

There is no tube of paint that says, 'Don't know.' I have to come to grips with it. (Arnold Friberg)

It's not easy being green. (Kermit the Frog, Muppet)

If you want an interesting party sometime, combine cocktails and a fresh box of crayons for everyone. (Robert Fulghum)

Tintoretto attempted to fill the line of Michelangelo with color, without tracing its principle. (Henry Fuseli)

Color in certain places has the great value of making the outlines and structural planes seem more energetic. (Antonio Gaudi)

-on Vincent Van Gogh...
Oh yes! He loved yellow, did good Vincent... When the two of us were together in Arles, both of us insane, and constantly at war over beautiful colors, I adored red; where could I find a perfect vermilion? (Paul Gauguin)

Color! What a deep and mysterious language, the language of dreams. (Paul Gauguin)

Color which, like music, is a matter of vibrations, reaches what is most general and therefore most indefinable in nature: its inner power... (Paul Gauguin)

If you see a tree as blue, then make it blue. (Paul Gauguin)

It is the eye of ignorance that assigns a fixed and unchangeable color to every object; beware of this stumbling block. (Paul Gauguin)

I can hide as much as I want in my colours. (Sara Genn)

Having a favourite colour is like having a favourite lung. (Sara Genn)

Vibrancy is only as effective as the mastering of restraint. (Sara Genn)

With the brush we merely tint, while the imagination alone produces colour. (Theodore Gericault)

If I see everything in gray, and in gray all the colors which I experience and which I would like to reproduce, then why should I use any other color? I've tried doing so, for it was never my intention to paint only with gray. But in the course of my work I have eliminated one color after another, and what has remained is gray, gray, gray! (Alberto Giacometti)

The color of truth is gray. (Andre Gide)

Colours are light's suffering and joy. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

Colours are the deeds of light, its deeds and sufferings. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

Suffice it to say that black and white are also colors... for their simultaneous contrast is as striking as that of green and red, for instance. (Vincent van Gogh)

I am crazy about two colors: carmine and cobalt. Cobalt is a divine color and there is nothing so beautiful for creating atmosphere. Carmine is as warm and lively as wine... the same with emerald green. (Vincent van Gogh)

How lovely yellow is! It stands for the sun. (Vincent van Gogh)

-from a letter by Vincent Van Gogh to Emile Bernard, June 1888...
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)

It is only after years of struggle and deprivation that the young artist should touch color - and then only in the company of his betters. (El Greco)

The world is not black and white. More like black and grey. (Henry Graham Greene)

You can't go wrong with the use of red; every painting should have red in it. (George De Groat)

Beware of color theories. Theories in color photography are dangerous. The plain fact that there are so many of them proves my point. (Ernst Haas)

Be sensitive to your sensitive inner capacities to respond to color. (Nathan Cabot Hale)

Take the time to make the correct colour for your painting once - so you paint 7 paintings one time rather than 1 painting 7 times! (Andrew Hamilton)

-on Paul Cezanne...
Has anyone ever placed this color more reasonable with more of a sense of time and measure than he? (Marsden Hartley)

I have come to the conclusion that it is better to have two colors in right relation to each other than to have a vast confusion of emotional exuberance. (Marsden Hartley)

Each day has its own individuality of color. (Charles Hawthorne)

Put variety in white. (Charles Hawthorne)

See what you can do with your daring with color and your ignorance mixed with it. (Charles Hawthorne)

Color is only beautiful when it means something. (Robert Henri)

Never use pure white; it doesn't exist in nature. (A. T. Hibbard)

I love color. I feel it inside me. It gives me a buzz. (Damien Hirst)

If artists do see fields blue they are deranged, and should go to an asylum. If they only pretend to see them blue, they are criminals and should go to prison. (Adolf Hitler)

Water in swimming pools changes its look more than in any other form... its colour can be man-made and its dancing rhythms reflect not only the sky but, because of its transparency, the depth of the water as well. If the water surface is almost still and there is a strong sun, then dancing lines with the colours of the spectrum appear everywhere. (David Hockney)

Color is an intense experience on its own. (Jim Hodges)

Color exists simultaneously with form. Both elements are constantly associated but color strikes you more – a rose for instance – sometimes form – the human body. (Ferdinand Hodler)

Colors must fit together as pieces in a puzzle or cogs in a wheel. (Hans Hofmann)

The whole world, as we experience it visually, comes to us through the mystic realm of color. Our entire being is nourished by it. This mystic quality of color should likewise find expression in a work of art. (Hans Hofmann)

Color is a plastic means of creating intervals... color harmonics produced by special relationships, or tensions. We differentiate now between formal tensions and color tensions, just as we differentiate in music between counterpoint and harmony. (Hans Hofmann)

Colour creates, enhances, changes, reveals and establishes the mood of the painting. (Kiff Holland)

It is wonderful how much depends upon the relations of black and white... A black and white, if properly balanced, suggests colour. (Winslow Homer)

The greatest masterpieces were once only pigments on a palette. (Henry S. Hoskins)

A yellow room gives you perpetual sunshine. (Steve Hovland)

I believe I'll take off my colors for awhile / And just kick back and sing some blues... (Ray Wylie Hubbard)

I forcibly liberated my palette to one red, one blue and one yellow. Why am I amazed that I can produce pretty well all the colors I want from three primaries? (Pepper Hume)

Give up the idea of 'color' for awhile! Consider masses - values, only... One dark and one light place in every picture. (William Morris Hunt)

-on Titian...
There is true color, there is nature without exaggeration, without forced brilliance! He is exact. (Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres)

Better gray than garishness. (Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres)

He who wishes to become a master of color must see, feel, and experience each individual color in its endless combinations with all other colors. (Johannes Itten)

Only those who love color are admitted to its beauty and immanent presence. It affords utility to all, but unveils its deeper mysteries only to its devotees. (Johannes Itten)

Color is life, for a world without color seems dead. As a flame produces light, light produces color. As intonation lends color to the spoken word, color lends spiritually realized sound to a form. (Johannes Itten)

Violet has the shortest wavelength of the spectrum. Behind it, the invisible ultraviolet. Roses are Red, Violets are Blue. Poor violet, violated for a rhyme. (Derek Jarman)

Red protects itself. No colour is as territorial. It stakes a claim, is on the alert against the spectrum. (Derek Jarman)

Indian yellow, banned. Cows were poisoned with mango leaves and the colour was made from their urine. It is the bright yellow in Indian miniatures. Although yellow occupies one-twentieth of the spectrum, it is the brightest colour. (Derek Jarman)

Painters use red like spice. (Derek Jarman)

'Why did you choose orange as the colour for The Gates?' (Karen Wright) 'SAFFRON! SAFFRON! They are SAFFRON!' (Jean-Claude)

A prettier grey can be made by mixing a color with its near-complement... This is because the grey is closer in character to the color being greyed. (Michael Chesley Johnson)

Fog and smog should not be confused and are easily separated by color. (Chuck Jones)

My favorite color to glaze with is yellow. It always glows just like stained glass lit up by the sun. (Jane Jones)

Trying to brighten a dull color is nearly impossible... I start with a color that is too intense so I can calm it as needed. (Jane Jones)

Vermeer's blues are silent, but they touch your soul. (Jonathan Jones)

Raw umber is my favorite color. Whenever I see that color, I can see and smell leaves and new beginnings. Color is felt, after all. (Thomas William Jones)

Colors express the main psychic functions of man. (Carl Gustav Jung)

Color, like everything else concerning visual expression, usually boils down to a gift, an innate sensibility and sensitivity. Ultimately, artists develop their own palette and color sense. (Scott Kahn)

The artist's alertness to the coloristic demands of each picture, the ability to respond to the picture's needs, to feed the color until its appetite is satiated; these are the true measures of a colorist's talent. (Wolf Kahn)

I applied streaks and blobs of colors onto the canvas with a palette knife, and I made them sing with all the intensity I could... (Wassily Kandinsky)

Almost without exception, blue refers to the domain of abstraction and immateriality. (Wassily Kandinsky)

Color provokes a psychic vibration. Color hides a power still unknown but real, which acts on every part of the human body. (Wassily Kandinsky)

A parallel between color and music can only be relative – just as a violin can give warm shades of tone, so yellow has shades, which can be expressed by various instruments. (Wassily Kandinsky)

The sound of colors is so definite that it would be hard to find anyone who would express bright yellow with bass notes or dark lake with treble... (Wassily Kandinsky)

As a picture painted in yellow always radiates spiritual warmth, or as one in blue has apparently a cooling effect, so green is only boring. (Wassily Kandinsky)

In the hierarchy of colors, green represents the social middle class, self-satisfied, immovable, narrow... (Wassily Kandinsky)

Absolute green is the most restful color, lacking any undertone of joy, grief, or passion. On exhausted men this restfulness has a beneficial effect, but after a time it becomes tedious. (Wassily Kandinsky)

Colors produce a corresponding spiritual vibration, and it is only as a step towards this spiritual vibration that the elementary physical impression is of importance. (Wassily Kandinsky)

Red is a colour I've felt very strongly about. Maybe red is a very Indian colour, maybe it's one of those things that I grew up with and recognise at some other level. (Anish Kapoor)

Red, of course, is the colour of the interior of our bodies. In a way it's inside out, red. (Anish Kapoor)

Color, rather than shape, is more closely related to emotion. (David Katz)

Color and Light are inseparable. (Thomas Jefferson Kitts)

I still come closest to success with drawing. When I use color the results are dubious, for these painfully gained experiences bear less fruit. (Paul Klee)

Color possesses me. I don't have to pursue it. It will possess me always, I know it. That is the meaning of this happy hour: Color and I are one. I am a painter. (Paul Klee)

Color is the place where our brain and the universe meet. (Paul Klee)

Blue has no dimensions; it is beyond dimensions, whereas the other colours are not... All colours arouse specific associative ideas... while blue suggests at most the sea and sky, and they, after all, are in actual, visible nature what is most abstract. (Yves Klein)

People sometimes think I take a white canvas and paint a black sign on it, but this is not true. I paint the white as well as the black, and the white is just as important. (Franz Kline)

I make notes of the colors I use so I am not mucking about when it comes to a large canvas... Color studies save a lot of time and keep your paint work fresh. (Sharon Knettell)

If you take an intense color and put an intense complement next to it without graying it, it's very hot. The gray allows the eye to do the visual mixing. (Simmie Knox)

You can spend a lifetime studying the interaction of colours, and painting how red can dance, so when the viewer 'gets it' and says 'Aha!' their way of seeing is transformed. (Gayle Konantz)

My colors are logically chosen. (Mark Kostabi)

-on the works of Douglas Walker...
Two colours are enough, just blue and white - more might be a nightmare. (Jennifer Kostuik)

I began to analyze watercolors by the masters: Winslow Homer, Maurice Prendergast, J.M.W. Turner, and John Singer Sargent... their clarity of color resulted from, yes, a touch of genius, but also from a sincere dedication to the medium. They were patient enough to experiment and formulate effective color combinations. (Jim Kosvanec)

To use color well is as difficult as for a fish to pass from water to air or earth. (Andre L'Hote)

Perhaps colour, what the individual expects from it, and how he approaches the use of it, is an ingrained 'thing,' very much like the knowledge of the laws of one's own land... (Jen Lacoste)

Colour is always a consequence, never a cause. (Edwin Land)

I will use contrasting colors to disrupt an area of color that I find too harmonious, until a new harmony or an interesting clash occurs. (Jean-Claude Langer)

Of all the hues, reds have the most potency. If there is one electric blue, a dozen reds are so charged. Use them to punctuate white, burn into bronzes, or dynamite black. (Jack Lenor Larsen)

A smart walk through a gallery from a fifteenth century to a sixteenth century, and then a seventeenth century room will reveal how in successive centuries the brilliancy of oil picture diminishes... (A. P. Laurie)

There is an undeniable virtue to a true black; allowing the brain to be mesmerized and pulling the pupils deep into that unfound but sensed abyss. (Jamie Lavin)

Colour should be used to depict the three major emotions in a man's life – anticipation, realization and retrospection. (Ernest Lawson)

Man needs colour to live; it's just as necessary an element as fire and water. (Fernand Leger)

The use of reds, yellows or blues in profusion is not good art, but if considerable grey is added, this softens their effect and shows them to advantage. (A. C. Leighton)

The trick is to make color relationships work, using a combination of logical color principles and your intuition. (Nita Leland)

A colour is luminous if it is a little bit lighter and a hell of a lot brighter than the colour beside it... Use any colour as long as the value is right. (John Leonard, artist)

It's a good thing that when God created the rainbow he didn't consult a decorator or he would still be picking colors. (Sam Levenson)

Color is crucial in painting, but it is very hard to talk about. There is almost nothing you can say that holds up as a generalization, because it depends on too many factors: size, modulation, the rest of the field, a certain consistency that color has with forms, and the statement you're trying to make. (Roy Lichtenstein)

I never do color sketches. I do color on the canvas. I have always felt that in order to be a good painter one should be color-blind, because color doesn't have to be seen. It only needs to be felt. (Richard Lindner)

Art without color would lose much of its purpose. (Andrew Loomis)

As the sun colors flowers, so does art color life. (John Lubbock)

Every day advanced the passing of the leaf, and soon our painters had to go in quest of the desirable 'spot of red.' The hills that had been crimson and scarlet with maple were changed to purplish grey. The yellow leaves were following fast. They realized one night of breaking cloud that there was a growing moon, and they looked at old star friends from the car door - the Dipper lying flat among the spruce tops, and one rare night bright Capella dimmed in a jet of Aurora. After such a night the trees could resist no longer, and they saw many a one cast off all her leaves in one desperate shower. Birch woods, that were dense yellow in the morning were open grey by night. But the wild cherry leaves still hung as though the high fifes and violins were to finish the great concert of colour. They were another of the notable little graces of the bush, daintily hung in every shade from palest yellow to deep crimson against the big blue-gold hills of the Montreal Valley. (J. E. H. MacDonald)

When you glaze on a bright white ground it is like looking through colour rather than at it – like looking through stained glass. (Fred Machetanz)

Lapis lazulis is the crystal colour and stone one should wear for tapping into one's creativity. (Mary Jean Mailloux)

A superb membrane of paint is a feast for the eye... applying the colours in transparent layers on an underpainting rather than mixing wet colours. (Cornelis Le Mair)

The artist who pictures sounds as colours, who feels the difference in microns between one sea green and another... is not attending to what the world considers important. (Eric Maisel)

The artist, busy and unsettled, can find a moment's peace – and even whole-being rejuvenation – by quietly attuning to a red sky, a gray sky, a black sky, a blue sky. (Eric Maisel)

Colors all over... Walls are breaking down... let me fly now. (Ashgan Makarem)

Color is the essence of painting, which the subject always killed. (Kasimir Malevich)

I ripped through the blue shade of the constraints of color. (Kasimir Malevich)

I have broken the blue boundary of color limits, come out into the white; beside me comrade-pilots swim in this infinity. (Kasimir Malevich)

I have established the semaphore of Suprematism. I have beaten the lining of the colored sky, torn it away and in the sack that formed itself, I have put color and knotted it. Swim! The free white sea, infinity, lies before you. (Kasimir Malevich)

Color is a matter of taste and of sensitivity. (Edouard Manet)

Black is not a color. (Edouard Manet)

I am attracted to generic or 'industrial' colours; paper bag brown, file cabinet gray, industrial green, that kind of thing. (Robert Mangold)

Blue is the male principle, stern and spiritual. Yellow the female principle, gentle, cheerful and sensual. Red is matter, brutal and heavy and always the colour which must be fought and vanquished by the other two. (Franz Marc)

For me it is always the colour, first and foremost. (Queen Margrethe II)

Cutting directly into color reminds me of a sculptor's carving into stone. (Henri Matisse)

The use of expressive colors is felt to be one of the basic elements of the modern mentality, an historical necessity, beyond choice. (Henri Matisse)

I am as curious about color as one would be visiting a new country, because I have never concentrated so closely on color expression. Up to now I have waited at the gates of the temple. (Henri Matisse)

A certain blue enters your soul. A certain red has an effect on your blood-pressure. (Henri Matisse)

A thimbleful of red is redder than a bucketful. (Henri Matisse)

The chief function of color should be to serve expression. (Henri Matisse)

A colourist makes his presence known even in a simple charcoal drawing. (Henri Matisse)

Purer colors... have in themselves, independently of the objects they serve to express, a significant action on the feelings of those who look at them. (Henri Matisse)

Until I was 15, I thought everyone constantly saw colors. Colors in books, colors in math formulas, colors at concerts. But when I finally asked my brother which color the letter C was (canary yellow, by the way) I realized my mind wasn't quite as normal as I had thought. (Melissa S. McCracken)

Color that has been built up in stages has a different character than a solitary layer of color. Plying in several layers of pigment, weaving each color on top of the last, creates a richness of hue that is otherwise unobtainable. (Richard McDaniel)

Any yellow, any blue, any red and a white are all I need. (Andrew McDermott)

The key of D is daffodil yellow, B major is maroon, and B flat is blue. (Marian McPartland)

At one time, Heinz tried making strangely colored ketchup, including purple, but gave up on it because consumers didn't believe it was ketchup. Would you eat a blue steak? (Michael Michalko)

White covers a multitude of sins. (Jonathan Milne)

Working in white makes people look into it. White is ethereal. There's a purity to it, it makes things look elevated in a way. There's a whole palette of white... (Jonathan Milne)

Colour is, on the evidence of language alone, very bound up with the feelings. (Marion Milner)

I am Charles Mingus. Half-black man. Yellow man. Half-yellow. Not even yellow, nor white enough to pass for nothing but black and not too light enough to be called white. (Charles Mingus)

Little by little, I've reached the stage of using only a small number of forms and colors. It's not the first time that painting has been done with a very narrow range of colors. The frescoes of the tenth century are painted like this. For me, they are magnificent things. (Joan Miro)

I try to apply colors like words that shape poems, like notes that shape music. (Joan Miro)

I'm intrigued that one can recognize different parts of the world solely by the particular color of the water. (Leonard Mizerek)

I have felt just what the mood of colors means to me: it means that everything in the picture changes its local color according to the same principle and that thereby all muted tones blend in a unified relationship, one to the other. (Paula Modersohn-Becker)

I choose color on the spur of the moment. People ask me why I paint in red. I do not have the slightest idea. I was painting in blue, then I had a need to paint in red. To be able to interact with the medium, this is the key. There are no sure ways to do art. (Guido Molinari)

The colored planes, as much by position and dimension as by the greater value given to color, plastically express only relationships and not forms. (Piet Mondrian)

Since the appearance of impressionism, the official salons, which used to be brown, have become blue, green and red... (Claude Monet)

Colors pursue me like a constant worry. They even worry me in my sleep. (Claude Monet)

Colour is my day-long obsession, joy and torment. (Claude Monet)

The point is to know how to use the colours, the choice of which is, when all's said and done, a matter of habit. (Claude Monet)

-painting in Bordighera, Italy...
I haven't yet managed to capture the colour of this landscape; there are moments when I'm appalled at the colours I'm having to use, I'm afraid what I'm doing is just dreadful and yet I really am understating it; the light is simply terrifying. (Claude Monet)

- Anne of the Island...
Besides, I've been feeling a little blue - just a pale, elusive azure. It isn't serious enough for anything darker. (Lucy Maud Montgomery)

Most eyes have more than one color, but usually they're related. Blue eyes may have two shades of blue, or blue and gray, or blue and green, or even a fleck or two of brown. Most people don't notice that. (Elizabeth Moon)

Speed kills colour... the gyroscope, when turning at full speed, shows up gray. (Paul Morand)

Think colour! Know how to imagine it! (Gustave Moreau)

The 'pure' red of which certain abstractionists speak does not exist. Any red is rooted in blood, glass, wine, hunters' caps and a thousand other concrete phenomena. Otherwise we would have no feeling toward red and its relations... (Robert Motherwell)

Colours come out of a tube pure; why is it that painters take such a long, indirect road to find them, searching for them in the light, in the shadows? (Rodrigo Moynihan)

I make black and white prints because I want to go back to the beginning. (Shiko Munakata)

Black and white are absolute... expressing the most delicate vibration, the most profound tranquility, and unlimited profundity. (Shiko Munakata)

I was walking along a road one evening – on one side lay the city, and below me was the fjord. The sun went down – the clouds were stained red, as if with blood. I felt as though the whole of nature was screaming – it seemed as though I could hear a scream. I painted that picture, painting the clouds like real blood. The colours screamed. (Edvard Munch)

Some of us come on earth seeing – some of us come on earth seeing color. (Louise Nevelson)

I fell in love with black; it contained all color. It wasn't a negation of color... Black is the most aristocratic color of all... You can be quiet, and it contains the whole thing. (Louise Nevelson)

For the Rays, to speak properly, have no Colour. In them there is nothing else than a certain power and disposition to stir up a sensation of this Colour or that. (Isaac Newton)

Colours in vibration, peeling like silver bells and clanging like bronze bells, proclaiming happiness, passion and love, soul, blood and death. (Emil Nolde)

Whether the flower or the color is the focus I do not know. I do know the flower is painted large to convey my experience with the flower - and what is my experience if it is not the color? (Georgia O'Keeffe)

I found I could say things with colors that I couldn't say in any other way – things that I had no words for. (Georgia O'Keeffe)

I know I cannot paint a flower. I cannot paint the sun on the desert on a bright summer morning, but maybe in terms of paint color I can convey to you my experience of the flower or the experience that makes the flower of significance to me at that particular time. (Georgia O'Keeffe)

All the earth colours of the painter's palette are out there in the many miles of badlands... (Georgia O'Keeffe)

There's something about black. You feel hidden away in it. (Georgia O'Keeffe)

I don't think of myself as a 'colorist'; I look at myself as a value painter. While I paint I do not think directly of what colors I wish to use... rather I think of temperature. (Don O'Neill)

My mother warned me to avoid things coloured red. (Claes Oldenburg)

Color in color is felt at any and every place of the pictorial organization; in its immediacy - its particularity. Color must be felt throughout. (Jules Olitski)

What I would like in my painting is simply a spray of colour that hangs like a cloud, but does not lose its shape. (Jules Olitski)

-when asked what he mixed his colors with...
I mix them with my brains, sir. (John Opie)

Buying watercolor paints requires that you know the colors and their confusing and seemingly inconsistent nomenclature. No standardization exists... (Hilary Page)

I sometimes go for the strongest, most vivid colour on the palette, which in the case of movies is violence. (Brian de Palma)

To achieve depth the colour has to penetrate the paper. (Shanti Panchal)

If time were a color, I bet it would be a tasteful off-white. (Greg Parrish)

If the tones are balanced, you can use almost any colour. (Janine Parsons)

Colour stops me in the street, invites me to breathe it in and take it with me. (Suzanne Partridge)

Each colour is applied to the canvas in relation to the colours next to it. The painting becomes a living thing and calls out for the colour it wants. (Neil Patterson)

This may sound a bit simple, but the rainbow was my teaching source about mixing color. (Jim Pescott)

Colour is as variable and evanescent in the form of pigment as in visible nature. (Walter J. Phillips)

It is the sense of unfamiliar envelopment that is impressive, whether in the living grays of hoarfrost, the crimson of the heavens at sunset, or the golden suffusions of autumn. (Walter J. Phillips)

In painting, whether colour reflection is apparent or not, every hue must echo neighbouring hues, so that homogeneity may be attained. (Walter J. Phillips)

Why do two colors, put one next to the other, sing? Can one really explain this? No. (Pablo Picasso)

When I haven't any blue I use red. (Pablo Picasso)

I want to know one thing. What is color? (Pablo Picasso)

They'll sell you thousands of greens. Veronese green and emerald green and cadmium green and any sort of green you like, but that particular green, never. (Pablo Picasso)

I find great pleasure in using color out of context to express emotion and to entertain the viewer. (Carlton Plummer)

White is going to lighten things as well as cool them down, in general. Be aware of this... (Colin Poole)

The idea that you mix a lot of colors and you get mud - I think is a load of crap. Mixing colors you get all kinds of vibrating, muted colors. I prefer not to not mix the colors thoroughly - so the brushstrokes have distinct different colors within. (Colin Poole)

We always made our illustrations at least 200 percent larger than what was needed... all the small imperfections didn't show and they looked clean as a whistle... I wonder if colors intensify when they are condensed to a smaller size. (Frances Poole)

Colors in painting are as allurements for persuading the eyes, as the sweetness of meter is in poetry. (Nicolas Poussin)

If I can someday see M. Claude Monet's garden, I feel sure that I shall see something that is not so much a garden of flowers as of colours and tones... because it was planted so that only the flowers with matching colours will bloom at the same time. (Marcel Proust)

It can take an enormous amount of time to come to terms with the idea of using a diversified range of different colours and use them to simply describe what appears to be a flesh pink. (Sally Pullen)

At a certain point the well-versed musician does not need to think of the keys, where they are located, or which scale or sequence of notes will recall a certain mood... The artisan can think of the palette as an instrument with each of the colors representing a different note on the keyboard. (Stephen Quiller)

The older I get, the more I feel that color is what painting is. Painting is primarily color. (Joseph Raffael)

My personal theory is that being frugal with the number of colours, one gets to know them intimately and to understand how each reacts with the others. (Ron Ranson)

I wouldn't use the same color in a picture in more than one place. (Robert Rauschenberg)

I take a break and do some close-up figurative pieces, just taking enjoyment in the way the colors butt up against each other in a pleasurable way... happily exploring. (Liz Reday)

The fundamental grey, which differentiates the masters, expresses them, is the soul of all colour. (Odilon Redon)

Partially mixed colors, mixed on the paper, are more interesting than thoroughly mixed colors from the palette's mixing area. (Charles Reid)

I use the same palette of colors in oil and watercolor, and I've never worried about transparent or opaque pigments, since I'm not glazing. (Charles Reid)

As an artist I would like to eliminate the symbolic pretty much, for black is interesting not as a color but as a non-color and as the absence of color. (Ad Reinhardt)

With a limited palette, the older painters could do just as well as today... what they did was sounder. (Pierre-Auguste Renoir)

I want a red to be sonorous, to sound like a bell. If it doesn't turn out that way, I add more reds and other colors until I get it. (Pierre-Auguste Renoir)

On the whole, the modern palette is the same as the one used by the artists of Pompeii... I mean it has not been enriched. The ancients used earths, ochres, and ivory-black – you can do anything with that palette. (Pierre-Auguste Renoir)

-on a Jongkind...
Such a magnificent sky, and it's nothing but white paper! (Pierre-Auguste Renoir)

With all their damned talk of modern painting, I've been forty years discovering that the queen of all colours is black! (Pierre-Auguste Renoir)

White does not exist in nature. (Pierre-Auguste Renoir)

If light is the spiritual quality of painting, color is surely its heart and passion. (Robert Reynolds)

The distinct blue, red, and yellow colors... though they have not the kind of harmony which is produced by a variety of broken and transparent colors, have the effect of grandeur. (Sir Joshua Reynolds)

Perhaps blue, red, and yellow strike the mind more forcibly from there not being any great union between them, as martial music, which is intended to rouse the nobler passions... (Sir Joshua Reynolds)

Colours are promiscuous. They get infected by their neighbors. (Paul Richard)

Grey. It makes no statement whatever; it evokes neither feelings nor associations: it is really neither visible nor invisible. Its inconspicuousness gives it the capacity to mediate... It has the capacity that no other colour has, to make 'nothing' visible. (Gerhard Richter)

The image begins to tell me what mood it's in – happy, sad – which tells me what colors to use and how to continue. (Ruth B. Rieber)

The actual basis of colour is instability. Once you accept that in lieu of something which is stable, which is form, you are dealing with something which is unstable in its basic character, you begin to get a way of dealing with it. (Bridget Riley)

- after two years copying Seurat's painting, Bridge of Courbevoie...
I learned from Seurat this important thing about colour and light, that 'a light' can be built from colour. I learned a great deal about interaction, that 'a blue' in different parts (the same blue) will play all sorts of different roles. (Bridget Riley)

If you can allow colour to breathe, to occupy its own space, to play its own game in its unstable way, it's wanton behaviour, so to speak. It is promiscuous like nothing. (Bridget Riley)

Consider your warm/cool colours. Every cool note presents an opportunity to put a warm note right next to it. (Richard Robinson)

Now colour... is the flower of fine modelling. These two qualities always accompany each other, and it is these qualities which give to every masterpiece of the sculptor the radiant appearance of living flesh. (Auguste Rodin)

Color is but a sensation and has no existence outside the nervous system of living beings. (Nicholas Ogden Rood)

If you... are moved only by the color relationships, then you miss the point. (Mark Rothko)

- Eleanor & Park...
...and his eyes were so green they could turn carbon dioxide into oxygen. (Rainbow Rowell)

White is poison to a picture: use it only in highlights. (Peter Paul Rubens)

Everything that you can see in the world around you presents itself to your eyes only as an arrangement of patches of different colors. (John Ruskin)

Blue color is everlastingly appointed by the deity to be a source of delight. (John Ruskin)

The man who can see all gray, and red, and purples in a peach, will paint the peach rightly round, and rightly altogether. But the man who has only studied its roundness may not see its purples and grays, and if he does not will never get it to look like a peach; so that great power over color is always a sign of large general art-intellect. (John Ruskin)

The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love colour the most. (John Ruskin)

The painter has to unlearn the habit of thinking that things seem to have the color which common sense says they 'really' have, and to learn the habit of seeing things as they appear. (Bertrand Russell)

I don't know the difference between a warm color and a cool one. (Charles M. Russell)

Color and light must be entirely melted into one and felt as such – and light must be expressed as it is felt as color. (Morgan Russell)

Through a process of trial and error and experimentation, I discovered the simplest method - using only black - produced work with the strongest visual impact installed. (Paul Russo)

I sometimes use a lot of light greens and greys when I feel there is sadness in the painting. (Robert Ryan)

The white is just a means of exposing other elements. White enables other things to become visible. (Robert Ryman)

Color gets all the credit, but values do all the work. (Sandy Sandy)

No small dabs of colour - you want plenty of paint to paint with. (John Singer Sargent)

Color is so much a matter of direct and immediate perception that any discussion of theory needs to be accompanied by experiments with the colors themselves. (Walter Sargent)

I consider myself a colorist. One color by itself isn't that interesting - it's the second color and a third color, and a dialogue starts and pretty soon you're swept up in it. You really don't know what's going to happen next. (Fritz Scholder)

I plan colors ahead of time only in a general sense. I have found that if I try to force the paint to do what I want, I miss valuable input from the watercolor process. As a result, the colors grow and change as the painting grows and changes. (Carol Ann Schrader)

The pigments on a palette represent a series of parts waiting to be unified. (Ian Semple)

How do you paint yellow wheat against a yellow sky? You paint it jet black. (Ben Shahn)

If you can see it, and if you know your color, you can paint it. (Nelson Shanks)

Don't go an inch without changing color. (Millard Sheets)

When students were given creativity tests, those whose test-cover pages had a green background gave more creative answers than those whose pages were white, blue, red or grey. (Sue Shellenbarger)

The art of the colorist has in some ways elements of mathematics and music. (Paul Signac)

By the elimination of all muddy colors, by the exclusive use of optical mixture of pure colors, by a methodical divisionism and a strict observation of the scientific theory of colors, the neo-impressionist insures a maximum of luminosity, of color intensity, and of harmony - a result that has never yet been obtained. (Paul Signac)

And all the colors I am inside have not been invented yet. (Shel Silverstein)

-interview, Art of Watercolor, Dec, 2011...
I have no system regarding palettes, arrangement, number of colors, etc. I know very little about pigments or even color theory--everything I do is quite intuitive. (Nicholas Simmons)

Color can overwhelm... One must understand that when it comes to color, 'less' is often 'more' – lesson taught us by the masters but ignored by many artists. (Joe Singer)

Painting is drawing, with the additional means of color. Painting without drawing is just 'coloriness,' color excitement. To think of color for color's sake is like thinking of sound for sound's sake. Color is like music. The palette is an instrument that can be orchestrated to build form. (John Sloan)

To play your colors by eye is worse than playing the piano by ear. (John Sloan)

Don't think of sea as color. Make it a solid that can support a boat. Think of 'wetness' as color-texture. (John Sloan)

Form your own color concept of things in nature. I have no rules for fine color to give you. (John Sloan)

The great black and white draftsman, the sculptor, and the blind man know that form and color are separate. The form itself is what the blind man knows... Color is surface skin that fits over the form. (John Sloan)

Who ever heard of a musician who was passionately fond of B flat? Color is like music. The palette is an instrument that can be orchestrated to build form. (John Sloan)

My palette contains a warm and cool of each primary, plus four modifiers: Yellow Ochre, Burnt Sienna, Blue-Violet and Phthalo Yellow-Green... just mix as I go for each painting. (Matt Smith)

All color depends on good value relationships. If its dark and light values are wrong, a color will never look right. (Ted Smuskiewicz)

With all its excesses, the modern impressionistic movement has given us one discovery, the color violet. It is the only discovery of importance in the art world since Velazquez. (Joaquin Sorolla)

Show your true colors. Mine is yellow. [Big Bird] (Caroll Spinney)

- Bluebird lyrics...
So, get all those blues, / Must be a thousand hues. / And be just differently used. / You just know. (Buffalo Springfield)

Green represents the dead image of life. (Rudolf Steiner)

Colour is the soul of Nature and of the entire cosmos... (Rudolf Steiner)

Nowhere in nature can you find purer color than sunlight passing through the petal of a flower. (Larry K. Stephenson)

The yellow glistens. / It glistens with various yellows, / Citrons, oranges and greens / Flowering over the skin. (Wallace Stevens)

Then the sea and heaven rolled as one and from the two came fresh transfigurings of freshest blue. (Wallace Stevens)

And as the blues or reds or blacks leap and quiver in their tenuous ambience or rise in austere thrusts to carry their power infinitely beyond the bounds of the limiting field, I move with them and find a resurrection from the moribund oppressions that held me only hours ago. (Clyfford Still)

As artists we are most concerned with the behavior of reflected light. When the reflected colors of the spectrum are curved around to form the familiar color wheel, exciting relationships are revealed. (Zoltan Szabo)

Allow one color, or just a couple of analogous colors, to dominate the mood of the painting; and let the others fulfil a supporting role. (Zoltan Szabo)

My husband's like, 'Could you make it look like a guy lives here? Why is everything white?' (Tamara Taggart)

Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky. (Rabindranath Tagore)

- New York: first seeing the work of the Abstract Expressionists...
They were wrestling with canvases, using violent colors and huge brush strokes. I arrived with gray, silent, sober, oppressed paintings. One critic said they were paintings that thought. (Antoni Tapies)

Hue does not refer to how light, dark, or intense, but only what kind of color: what hue. It takes all three aspects to make a color, therefore 'red' is not a color, but only one aspect, the hue, of some partially defined color. (William Tapley)

Full color experience is peculiarly satisfying even though it is exhausting and leaves you feeling two-thirds color blind when you're not making the effort. (William Tapley)

When you want full color perception, you must give up preferring some colors (only partially seen) and hating others, for you can only hate one aspect of a color, not a whole color, it seems, hate being blind, like 'love.' (William Tapley)

Often my very first flash of colour recognition, before it has been processed by the rest of the information in my brain, is the right one. (Catherine Taylor)

Life without colour is unimaginable; fortunately most of us don't have to try. (Sheila Timmins)

I'm colour-blind. I can see colours dogs can't even hear! (Murray Tinkelman)

A good painter needs only three colours: black, white and red. (Titian)

If you thoroughly mix the color on the palette, you will kill the color. Mixing ahead of time only works when you're painting the kitchen walls! (Aleksander Titovets)

Light is therefore colour. (J. M. W. Turner)

If I could find anything blacker than black I'd use it. (J. M. W. Turner)

The Mediterranean is always just white, white, white. (Cy Twombly)

I'm interested in color belonging to something, where it takes on a completely new kind of vibrancy, rather than being what you would call straight abstract paintings. And anyway it is so much more exciting trying to find out about the three dimensions of color and sticking it down on a two dimensional surface. (Euan Uglow)

We don't paint the color of the subject; in reality we paint the colors that reflect onto the subject. (Andries Veerman)

I work in black and white, then go from there. (Deon Venter)

My favorite color is a soft shade of 'Outright Totality,' but often I am lured by hues of 'Habitat' or a stunning tone of 'Subconscious.' (Jacques Vesery)

Any color works if you push it to the extreme. (Massimo Vignelli)

To any white body receiving the light from the sun, or the air, the shadows will be of a bluish cast. (Leonardo da Vinci)

Black is like a broken vessel, which is deprived of the capacity to contain anything. (Leonardo da Vinci)

In an atmosphere of uniform density the most distant things seen through it, such as the mountains, in consequence of the great quantity of atmosphere which is between your eye and them, will appear blue. Therefore you should make the building... wall which is more distant less defined and bluer... five times as far away, make five times as blue. (Leonardo da Vinci)

Vermilion alone could render the brilliant red of the tiles on the opposite slope. The orange of the soil, the harsh crude colors of the walls and greenery, the ultramarine and cobalt of the sky achieved an extreme harmony that was sensually and musically ordered. (Maurice de Vlaminck)

Only the series of colors on the canvas with all their power and vibrancy could, in combination with each other, render the chromatic feeling of that landscape. (Maurice de Vlaminck)

Renoir said once that nothing was so difficult, and at the same time so exciting, to paint, as white on white. (Ambroise Vollard)

Color has always been important to me, ever since my first deluxe box of Crayolas. (Susan Vreeland)

Learn to reach for colours instinctively, not automatically. Instinctively implies knowledge, sensitivity and perception. Automatically implies a mechanical reaction and a process that's akin to a formula. (Robert Wade)

You must feel the colours that are necessary for you to mix your desired hue and value. (Robert Wade)

- The Color Purple...
I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it. (Alice Walker)

HELPED are those who love all the colors of all the human beings, as they love all the colors of the animals and plants; none of their children, nor any of their ancestors, nor any parts of themselves, shall be hidden from them. (Alice Walker)

I first search for the color that will be the heart of my work... the rest of the colors are academic. (Linda Walker)

I love color. A visit to the grocery store is a treat – all those beautiful fruits and vegetables! (Joyce Ward)

Color affects the atmosphere of a classroom and its students... nurturing neutrals to decorate the classroom, with just enough cool colors to create a calm... However, the work they create is always vibrant, full of warm, brilliant splashes of color - the most colorful thing in the room! (Dorenda Crager Watson)

Color is the daily bread of the eyes. It is not only seen but also must be felt. (Frank Webb)

It's strange, I've seen colours at times that when I've gone back to check on them, they've vanished... (W. P. Weston)

Color affects our life. Color is physical... we see it. Color communicates... we receive information from the language of color. Color is emotional... it evokes our feelings. (Bride M. Whelan)

Truly color is vice! Of course, it can be, and has the right to be one of the finest virtues. Controlled by the strong hand and careful guidance of her Master drawing, color is a splendid Mistress, with a mate worthy of herself, her lover, but her Master likewise, the most magnificent Mistress possible, and the result is evident in all the glorious things that spring from their union. (James Abbott McNeill Whistler)

Mauve? Mauve is just pink trying to be purple. (James Abbott McNeill Whistler)

-to his students on colour...
Someday we shall control the full orchestra. (James Abbott McNeill Whistler)

Color is not about things, it is the means to show their presence in the painting. (Bill White)

The mind is excited by what painters refer to as 'broken color', the juxtaposition of two or more colors in a single passage. (Eric Wiegardt)

He had that curious love of green, which in individuals is always the sign of a subtle artistic temperament, and in nations is said to denote a laxity, if not a decadence of morals. (Oscar Wilde)

There is no criterion by which to recognize what is a color, except that it is one of our colors. (Ludwig Wittgenstein)

Imagine someone pointing to a place in the iris of a Rembrandt eye and saying, 'The walls of my room should be painted this color.' (Ludwig Wittgenstein)

Our ordinary language has no means for describing a particular shade of color. Thus it is incapable of producing a picture of this color. (Ludwig Wittgenstein)

Golden is a surface colour. (Ludwig Wittgenstein)

A color which would be 'dirty' if it were the color of a wall, needn't be so in a painting. (Ludwig Wittgenstein)

I think palettes can be quite telling. Mine is orderly and clean and well... precise... laid out from light top to dark bottom. And then there are those artists' palettes I think are so much fun! Heaps of vibrant gooey oil paint just waiting for brush. Absolutely delicious! (Peggy Woolsey)

My heart leaps up when I behold / A Rainbow in the sky: (William Wordsworth)

I love to study the many things that grow below the corn stalks and bring them back to the studio to study the color. If one could only catch that true color of nature – the very thought of it drives me mad. (Andrew Wyeth)

Gray is the queen of colors, because she makes everyone else look good. (Helen van Wyk)

It is always interesting to see how artists can cleverly create paintings of water without using blue or green, the obvious colours. (Lu Wei Xing)

I entreat fresh visions from the painters. Be lavish with your vermilion to portray the mountains in the spring. (Lu Xun)

Colour confines the totality of elemental work. (Jan Zawadzki)

Blue is the colour to choose when creativity is a priority. People are less literal and more exploratory with blue... Blue is open, free, and peaceful. (Dr. Juliet Zhu)

If you want a good solid color structure, you have to have a solid development in values, dark and light. (Milford Zornes)

Colour is a creative element, not a trimming. (Piet Zwart)