You can stick with a few clear-cut values, which are stronger than a multitude of values and will obviously yield a stronger painting. But not all subjects or light conditions appear that way... be sensible and paint with values that are appropriate and faithful to your subject.

Richard Schmid

In a sense, every work you do is a self-portrait because your paintings always reveal more about you than about your subject. Your experience of something, not the something itself, is the true underlying subject of every work you do.

Richard Schmid

experience self art

Somewhere within all of us is a wordless center, a part of us that hopes to be immortal in some way, a part that has remained unchanged since we were children, the source of our strength and compassion. This faint confluence of the tangible and the spiritual is where Art comes from. It has no known limits, and once you tap into it you will realize what truly rich choices you have. May each painting you do from that sacred place include an expression of gratitude for the extraordinary privilege of being an artist.

Richard Schmid

gratitude spiritual art

Talent, don't bother about wether or not you have it. Just assume that you do, and forget about it. Talent is a word we use after someone has become accomplished.

Richard Schmid

assuming talent use

As painters...we must always remember that our precious poetic visions and spiritual insights will remain forever locked within us until we can boil them down to a complex arrangement of a few hundred or possibly even thousands of brushstrokes.

Richard Schmid

vision spiritual forever

It often takes two to do a good painting - one to paint it, and another to rap the painter smartly with a hammer before he or she can ruin it.

Richard Schmid

collaboration rap two

If there is a conflict in your mind between what you know and what you are seeing, paint what you see because if you don't, the result will look like something that isn't there.

Richard Schmid

conflict mind looks

Don't wish for "secrets" of the masters, either. There are none worth fooling with. They had no special mediums or paints, nor special brushes that made their work great.

Richard Schmid

special secret wish

Make your art a gift of inspiration to others to work toward better things.

Richard Schmid

inspiration-to-others inspiration art

All great art originates from the innocent child within us expressing itself through the wisdom, experience and skill of an adult.

Richard Schmid

wisdom-experience children art

When we are bursting with some wordless experience, Art is our voice, the song of the heart.

Richard Schmid

voice song art

What sets you apart from the rest of humanity is your ability to give visual form to an idea - the skill to transform it into something more than merely the insight or perception alone.

Richard Schmid

skills giving ideas

I honestly believe students of painting in the next century will laugh at the abstract art movement. They will marvel at such a drawn-out regression in the plastic arts.

Richard Schmid

laughing believe art

My idealism is clearly one reason I'm an artist. I see art as one of mankind's more sublime acts, as a vital counterbalance to our base impulses .

Richard Schmid

sublime reason art

An incomplete sketch superbly executed is power.

Richard Schmid

incomplete power

If we only thought of our feet as we walk, we'd miss everything else.

Richard Schmid

walks missing feet

The grandest and simplest things contain worlds within worlds. Seeing them is a matter of the right point of view, and your painter's eye is the special portal to such sights.

Richard Schmid

eye views sight

There are times when I have started a work with an end in mind, but then, for one reason or another, as my picture unfolded, it emphatically suggested another direction... I always accept the risk and go for it. I'm convinced that at such times my painting is wiser than I am.

Richard Schmid

painting risk mind

The strength and clarity of the picture you envision at the start will tell you when you are done. You are finished when you have said what you wish to say, when nothing added can make it better.

Richard Schmid

finishing done wish

I alone must solve my problem. I have to clear my mind of everything else, think hard, analyze, explore my options, plan a strategy for the immediate situation, and then do whatever it takes. Sometimes it means scraping off what I have done and starting over again and again.

Richard Schmid

starting-over mean thinking

Don't go overboard with exotic or complex ways to paint. Stick to simple solutions, unless there is a good reason to do otherwise.

Richard Schmid

exotic simple way