Craig Thompson Quotes

I think all art - if it's good - is a result of really trying to create something that you can't put into words. Where language ends is where good art begins.

A painting means as much to you as a string of pearls to an ape.

It doesn't matter if you can't speak the same language. If you have pictures, or better still, if you can draw things, then you can communicate anything to anyone.

I like to write about painting because I think visually. I see my writing as blocks of color before it forms itself. I think I also care about painting because I'm not musical. Painting to me is not a metaphor for writing, but something people do that can never be reduced to words.

I believe that what we call beautiful is generally a by-product.

There is only one valuable thing in art: the thing you cannot explain.

Art is what can't be proven mathematically, right, it's where science ends. It's the part that makes you feel good, but you don't know why.

When you make illustrations, you're supposed to have a subtext; you're not just communicating words - you're actually adding another story altogether.

We all appreciated a certain aesthetic, and with that appreciation came a certain stylized presence.

Creativity helps us realize that we don't have to understand everything. We can enjoy something -feel it and use it- without ever fully comprehending it.

Every living person and thing responds to beauty. We all thirst for it. We receive strength and renewal by seeing stirring and satisfying sites.

I think a good poem should have some inscrutable part. You can't quite explain it. The poem can only explain itself to a certain limit and at that point you enter into a little bit of mystery. That for me is the perfect poem: to begin in clarity and to end in mystery.

Appreciation of art is a moral erection, otherwise mere dilettantism.

Beauty is assailed from two directions - by the cult of ugliness in the arts, and by the cult of utility in everyday life.

I adore pretty things & witty words.

Painting is a duality and abstract painting is an entirely aesthetic thing. It always remains on one level. It is only really interesting in the beauty of its patterns or its shapes.

And this vague little smile is my all purpose expression the meaning of which I will leave to your discretion.

A picture's beauty does not depend on the things portrayed in it.

I'm surprised when the work appears beautiful, and very pleased. And I think work can be very good and very successful without being able to call it beautiful, although I'm not clear about that. The work is good when it has a certain completeness; and when it's got a certain completeness, then it's beautiful.

It is the search for beauty...That is what it is. We find ourselves on this earth--gods and men--and we know that it is beautiful. That is one of the few things we understand--beauty; because it is there, in the world, and we can see it all about us. We want beauty. It requires our love. It just does.

What makes a sentence, a phrase, a moment, or a scene delightful? Something about recognizing the truth in it, hearing the music in it, understanding, intuitively perhaps, that the words are just right. It's not a matter of even context - delight is not limited to scenes or descriptions of happiness or beauty - but of aesthetic appreciation of the thing itself. As a reader, I find it's that moment when I want to stop reading, and also that moment when I know I can't. Delight is that it's what takes me by surprise and reminds me why I love the literary arts above all others.

Songwriting is a mystery. And it's a mystery to me that it's a mystery. But that sounds stupid.

Good painting is nothing else but a copy of the perfections of God and a reminder of His painting. Finally, good painting is a music and a melody which intellect only can appreciate, and with great difficulty.

People should talk less and draw more. Personally, I would like to renounce speech altogether and, like organic nature, communicate everything I have to say visually.

A painting requires a little mystery, some vagueness, and some fantasy. When you always make your meaning perfectly plain you end up boring people.