Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I do not know if you bridle your pen, but when my pencil moves, it is necesary to let it go, or - crash!... nothing more.
I want my pictures to be things. I want them to be made up of marks that are physically and individually self-sufficient.
A painting is finished when the subject comes back, when what has caused the painting to be made comes back as an object.
I have broken the blue boundary of color limits, come out into the white; beside me comrade-pilots swim in this infinity.
My paintings are very much about the consumption and production of blackness. And how blackness is marketed to the world.
As an artist, my concern is toward the synthesizing of all the visual elements at my disposal - at the exclusion of none.
If you think you know where you're going to be 10 years from now, that's where you're at now. You're just putting it off.
Medicine is the restoration of discordant elements; sickness is the discord of the elements infused into the living body.
I paint people, not because of what they are like, not exactly in spite of what they are like, but how they happen to be.
The model should only serve the very private function for the painter of providing the starting point for his excitement.
The virtue of pride, which was once the beauty of mankind, has given place to that fount of ugliness, Christian humility.
My drawings inspire, and are not to be defined. They place us, as does music, in the ambiguous realm of the undetermined.
To me there is no past or future in art. If a work of art does not live in the present, it must not be considered at all.
The connoisseur of painting gives only bad advice to the painter. For that reason I have given up trying to judge myself.
I go to the studio everyday because one day I may go and the Angel will be there. What if I don't go and the Angel comes?
To move the picture into our surroundings and give it real existence has been my ideal since I came to abstract painting.
It is the medium, or the specific configuration of the medium, that we call a work of art that brings feeling into being.
Since man's highest mission on earth is to spiritualize everything, it is his excrement in particular that needs it most.
Somewhere out there is a unique place for you to help others - a unique life role for you to fill that only you can fill.
How rich art is, if one can only remember what one has seen, one is never empty of thoughts or truly lonely, never alone.
Some of us will probably become famous. It will be an ironic fame fashioned largely by those who have never seen our work.
Some people are enraged, and some people are applauding. If there were a mission statement for graffiti, that would be it.
Most painters want recognition, especially by their peers. I achieved that a long time ago with TV. I don't need any more.
We get letters every day from people wanting more mountains. As many as I paint, they still say, 'Give me more mountains.'
It is important that the painting can be inhabited, so that the mind's eye, or the eye's mind, can move about it credibly.
By the single example of this painter devoted to his art with such independence, my destiny as a painter opened out to me.
People discuss my art and pretend to understand as if it were necessary to understand, when it's simply necessary to love.
My parents were from New England. It's very funny, but when I grew up, you always had to say, 'Yes, ma'am' and 'Yes, sir.'
The artist need not know very much; best of all let him work instinctively and paint as naturally as he breathes or walks.
I love my old paintings as postulates as fresh starting points but I have to destroy them. I have to make a new manifesto.
I would describe my work as expressionist. The expressionist point of view is stressing your own feelings about something.
I know pretty well what evidence is, and I tell you, such evidence as that for the resurrection has never broken down yet.
There were certain expectations that were assumed of me as a young black American 20th-century - then 20th-century artist.
I believe if you follow your heart and do what you love, success will follow. If you enchant yourself, others will be too.
Each of us has a universal within us. There's always that making of parts - but it doesn't touch the universal within you.
I don't know in advance what I am going to put on canvas any more than I decide beforehand what colours I am going to use.
Though I'm a rogue in talking upon Painting & Love I can be serious and honest upon any subject thoroughly pleasing to me.
In general, and most especially with artists, I pay as much attention to the man who does the work, as to the work itself.
My brushwork is quite unsystematic. I slam the paint on in all sorts of ways and leave each result to take care of itself.
Reputation is but a synonym of popularity: dependent on suffrage, to be increased or diminished at the will of the voters.
I think of myself as a beginner. Sometimes that's the whole joy. If you could just do it, there'd be no point in doing it.
I use color in terms of emotional quality, as a vehicle for feeling... feeling is everything I have experienced or thought.
Painting is a science pursued as an enquiry into the laws of nature...Observation is considered the key to natural science.
The word 'impressionism' as applied to art has been abused, and in the general acceptance of the term has become perverted.
In the end, it doesn't really matter what you paint. It's all just a routine to connect yourself finally with other people.
I'm quite content: although what I'm doing is far from being as I should like, I am complemented often enough all the same.
People tend to remember and mentally classify work according to how it looks, sometimes oblivious to the underlying intent.
Through my art I have tried to explain my life and its meaning. I have also intended to help others to clarify their lives.
Painting will have to deal more fully and less obliquely with life and nature's phenomena before it can again become great.
Writing in English made me become a foreigner in my own country. It helped me create the necessary distance to my homeland.