Includes bibliographical references and index.

Part I. Starting, finishing, and carrying on -- Starting -- The will to paint -- Singing better -- Good and bad -- and how and why -- It's so hard to finish -- Part II. Material matters -- Underneath the paint -- Ruben's recipes -- The brush dipping in the paint -- Marks of the hand -- Flesh and meat -- Part III. The continent of colour -- The red studio -- Engulfed in colour -- Painting in the key of D -- Drawing in colour -- Reimagining the body -- Part IV. Travelling in time and space -- Crossing continents, painting maps -- El Greco travels through time -- Making space -- Painting history -- Taking flight with Miró -- Part V. The camera, the stage, and the screen -- The brush and the lens -- Staging a painting -- Painting a collage -- Whose hand makes the mark? -- Part VI. Feelings and meanings -- Good, bad, ugly -- What does a Rothko mean? -- Beyond anything for feeling -- Is the clue in the title? -- Epilogue: the world in a picture, a painting as a world.

"Painting is an almost inconceivably ancient activity that remains vigorously alive in the twenty-first century. Every successful painting creates a new world, which we inhabit for as long as we care to look at it. Paintings can incorporate profound ideas and paradoxes that can be grasped without words. For those who dedicate themselves to it, the art of painting can become an all-consuming, lifelong obsession. It is a subject on which painters themselves are often the most incisive commentators. Martin Gayford’s riveting and richly illustrated book deftly brings together numerous artists’ voices, past and present. It draws on a trove of conversations conducted over more than three decades with artists including Frank Auerbach, Gillian Ayres, Frank Bowling, Cecily Brown, Peter Doig, Lucian Freud, Katharina Fritsch, David Hockney, Claudette Johnson, R. B. Kitaj, Lee Ufan, Paula Rego, Gerhard Richter, Bridget Riley, Jenny Saville, Frank Stella, Luc Tuymans, Zeng Fanzhi, and many more. Here too is Vincent van Gogh on Rembrandt, John Constable on Titian, Francis Bacon on Velázquez, Lee Krasner on Pollock, and Jean-Michel Basquiat on Picasso. We hear the personal reflections of these artists on their chosen medium; how and why they paint; how they came to the practice; the influence of fellow painters; and how they find creative sustenance and inspiration in their art. How Painting Happens crosses the centuries to give us a wealth of insights into the endlessly compelling phenomenon of painters and painting."--Amazon.com.