Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I want paint to work as flesh.
I have a timetable, but no routine.
Everything is autobiographical and everything is a portrait.
The task of the artist is to make the human being uncomfortable.
The character of the artist doesn't enter into the nature of the art
Full, saturated colours have an emotional significance I want to avoid.
What do I ask of a painting? I ask it to astonish, disturb, seduce, convince.
My work is purely autobiographical... It is about myself and my surroundings.
I never think about my style but just try and make the pictures look believable.
The aura given out by a person or object is as much a part of them as their flesh.
The painter's obsession with his subject is all that he needs to drive him to work.
Losing as much money as I can get hold of is an instant solution to my economic problems.
As far as I am concerned the paint is the person. I want it to work for me just as flesh does
As far as I am concerned the paint is the person. I want it to work for me just as flesh does.
The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real.
The only secret I can claim to have is concentration, and that's something that can't be taught.
A painter must think of everything he sees as being there entirely for his own use and pleasure.
Whether it will convince or not, depends entirely on what it is in itself, what is there to be seen.
When I look at a body it gives me choice of what to put in a painting, what will suit me and what won't
When I look at a body it gives me choice of what to put in a painting, what will suit me and what won't.
The paintings that really excite me have an erotic element or side to them irrespective of subject matter
I would wish my portraits to be of the people, not like them. Not having a look of the sitter, being them.
Sometimes, when I've been staring too hard, I've noticed that I could see the circumference of my own eye.
The paintings that really excite me have an erotic element or side to them irrespective of subject matter.
The model should only serve the very private function for the painter of providing the starting point for his excitement
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.
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.
If all the qualities which a painter took from the model for his picture were really taken, no person could be painted twice.
The process of creation becomes necessary to the painter perhaps more than is the picture. The process in fact is habit-forming
The only way I could work properly was by using the absolute maximum of observation and concentration that I could possible muster.
I use the gallery as if it were a doctor. I come for ideas and help - to look at situations within painting, rather than paintings.
The painter must give a completely free rein to any feeling or sensations he may have and reject nothing to which he is naturally drawn.
A painter's tastes must grow out of what so obsesses him in life that he never has to ask himself what it is suitable for him to do in art.
You ask why I'm fascinated by the human figure? As a human animal, I am interested in some of my fellow animals: in their minds and bodies.
I could never put anything into a picture that wasn't actually there in front of me. That would be a pointless lie, a mere bit of artfulness.
It is through observation and perception of atmosphere that he [the artist] can register the feeling that he wishes his painting to give out.
Since the model he so faithfully copies is not going to be hung up next to the picture... it is of no interest whether it is an accurate copy of the model.
Painting is sometimes like those recipes where you do all manner of elaborate things to a duck, and then end up putting it on one side and only using the skin.
There is a distinction between fact and truth. Truth has an element of revelation about it. If something is true, it does more than strike one as merely being so.
I think half the point of painting a picture is that you don't know what will happen... that if painters did know what was going to happen they wouldn't bother to do it.
I have a hatred of habit and routine. And what dogs love is just that. They like regular everything, and I don't have regular anything. I have a timetable, but no routine.
It is the only point of getting up every morning: to paint, to make something good, to make something even better than before, not to give up, to compete, to be ambitious.
The paintings live because their creator has been passionately attentive to their theme, and his attention has left something for us to look at. It seems a sort of miracle.
I work from the people that interest me, and that I care about, in rooms that I live in and know. I use the people to invent my pictures, and I can work more freely when they are there.
The painter makes real to others his innermost feelings about all that he cares for. A secret becomes known to everyone who views the picture through the intensity with which it is felt.
I've always wanted to create drama in my pictures, which is why I paint people. It's people who have brought drama to pictures from the beginning. The simplest human gestures tell stories.
I don't want any colour to be noticeable... I don't want it to operate in the modernist sense as colour, something independent... Full, saturated colours have an emotional significance I want to avoid.
I am only interested in painting the actual person, in doing a painting of them, not in using them to some ulterior end of art. For me, to use someone doing something not native to them would be wrong.
And, since the model he faithfully copies is not going to be hung up next to the picture, since the picture is going to be there on its own, it is of no interest whether it is an accurate copy of the model.