Quotes by Richard Diebenkorn - Page 1

Don't be a Pollyanna!
Richard Diebenkorn / Painter
Courage
Pollyanna
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If you get an image try to destroy it.
Richard Diebenkorn / Painter
Imagination
Ifs
Trying
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I want painting to be difficult to do.
Richard Diebenkorn / Painter
Difficult
Painting
Want
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Don't 'discover' a subject of any kind.
Richard Diebenkorn / Painter
Kind
Subjects
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Do search, but in order to find other than what is searched for.
Richard Diebenkorn / Painter
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One wants to see the artifice of the thing as well as the subject.
Richard Diebenkorn / Painter
Artifice
Want
Wells
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Mistakes can't be erased, but they move you from your present position.
Richard Diebenkorn / Painter
Mistake
Moving
Position
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My father didn't think being an artist was a respectable or worthy goal for a man.
Richard Diebenkorn / Painter
Respectable
Worthy
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Use and respond to the initial fresh qualities but consider them absolutely expendable.
Richard Diebenkorn / Painter
Quality
Expendables
Use
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Somehow don't be bored, but if you must, use it in action. Use its destructive potential.
Richard Diebenkorn / Painter
Action
Bored
Use
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And I can just see that sometimes the technique is blasting powder rather than steady struggle.
Richard Diebenkorn / Painter
Sometimes
Struggle
Technique
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I can never accomplish what I want - only what I would have wanted had I thought of it beforehand.
Richard Diebenkorn / Painter
Ability
Accomplish
Want
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Attempt what is not certain. Certainty may or may not come later. It may then be a valuable delusion.
Richard Diebenkorn / Painter
Certain
Delusion
May
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All paintings start out of a mood, out of a relationship with things or people, out of a complete visual impression
Richard Diebenkorn / Painter
Mood
Painting
People
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My freedom consists in my moving about within the narrow frame that I have assigned myself for each one of my undertakings.
Richard Diebenkorn / Painter
Moving
Undertakings
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My insights come in periods of working. There are wonderful moments of surprise, but I'm superstitious enough not to want to talk about them.
Richard Diebenkorn / Painter
Periods
Surprise
Insights
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In a successful painting everything is integral - all the parts belong to the whole. If you remove an aspect or element you are removing its wholeness.
Richard Diebenkorn / Painter
Elements
Painting
Successful
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My freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful, the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles.
Richard Diebenkorn / Painter
Fields
Limits
Meaningful
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I have found in my still-life work that I seem to be able to tell what objects are important to me by what tends to stay in the painting as it develops.
Richard Diebenkorn / Painter
Able
Important
Painting
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I trust the symbol that is arrived at in the making of the painting. Meaningful symbols aren't invented as such, they are made or discovered as symbol later.
Richard Diebenkorn / Painter
Made
Meaningful
Painting
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I keep plastering it until it comes around to what I want, in terms of all I know and think about painting now, as well as in terms of the initial observation.
Richard Diebenkorn / Painter
Painting
Thinking
Want
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I would like the colors, their shapes and positions to be arrived at in response to and dictated by the condition of the total space at the time they are considered.
Richard Diebenkorn / Painter
Space
Color
Shapes
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I came to mistrust my desire to explode the picture and supercharge it in some way… what is more important is a feeling of strength in reserve – tension beneath calm.
Richard Diebenkorn / Painter
Desire
Feelings
Important
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I don't go into the studio with the idea of 'saying' something. What I do is face the blank canvas and put a few arbitrary marks on it that start me on some sort of dialogue.
Richard Diebenkorn / Painter
Arbitrary
Faces
Ideas
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My father didn't think being an artist was a respectable or worthy goal for a man. He hoped I would see my way to more serious work and would find myself turning towards medicine, law, or business.
Richard Diebenkorn / Painter
Men
Father
Thinking
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When I am halfway there with a painting, it can occasionally be thrilling... But it happens very rarely; usually it's agony... I go to great pains to mask the agony. But the struggle is there. It's the invisible enemy.
Richard Diebenkorn / Painter
Art
Pain
Struggle
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In abstract painting, I worried about the limited range of possibilities that, as time went on, became increasingly important to me. I wanted to express or deal with differences that an all-over paint and canvas 'presence' neutralized.
Richard Diebenkorn / Painter
Abstract
Canvas
Differences
Paint
Range
Worried
Time Me Important
Time Me Painting
Increasingly
Limited
Possibilities
Presence
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With rare exceptions, I respond most to painting that cuts across grain rather than following it. I think the artist here can get in touch with that grain rather than simply feel its flow. And he really can't cut right across it anyway.
Richard Diebenkorn / Painter
Flow
Following
Grain
Anyway
Rare
Respond
Cuts
Exceptions
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Abstract means literally to draw from or separate. In this sense every artist is abstract for he must create his own work from his visual impressions. A realistic or non-objective approach makes no difference. The result is what counts.
Richard Diebenkorn / Painter
Art
Differences
Mean
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Maybe the given person, cup, or landscape is lost before one gets to painting. A figure exerts a continuing and unspecified influence on a painting as the canvas develops. The represented forms are loaded with psychological feeling. It can't ever just be painting.
Richard Diebenkorn / Painter
Cups
Feelings
Landscape
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As a work progresses, its power to elicit and dictate response mounts. There seems to be an optimum moment when this power is at its greatest which just precedes the point where 'elicit' is no longer apt usage. 'Dictates' is the word for this condition and tyranny is the adversary.
Richard Diebenkorn / Painter
Power
Moments
Progress
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I want a painting to be difficult to do. The more obstacles, obstructions, problems - if they don't overwhelm - the better. I would like to feel that I am involved at any stage of the painting with all its moments, not just this 'now' moment where a superficial grace is so available.
Richard Diebenkorn / Painter
Available
Grace
Obstacles
Superficial
Overwhelm
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All paintings start out of a mood, out of a relationship with things or people, out of a complete visual impression. To call this expression abstract seems to me often to confuse the issue. Abstract means literally to draw from or separate. In this sense every artist is abstract . . . a realistic or non-objective approach makes no difference. The result is what counts.
Richard Diebenkorn / Painter
Artist
Expression
Mean
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Richard Diebenkorn Quotes - Page 1

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