QUOTES

Some favourites I’ve collected over the years.  They are not just relevant to art, but to life as well. I come back to them again and again.

Do search, but in order to find other than what is searched for. – Richard Diebenkorn

Mistakes can’t be erased, but they move you from your present position. – Richard Diebenkorn

The main thing in making art often, is letting go of your expectation and your idea. – Agnes Martin

The worst thing you can think about when you’re working is yourself. – Agnes Martin

It’s a simple and generous rule of life that whatever you practice, you will improve at. – Elizabeth Gilbert, from Big Magic

Failure has a function. It asks you whether you really want to go on making things. – Elizabeth Gilbert, from Big Magic

I have never created anything in my life that did not make me feel, at some point or another, like I was the guy who just walked into a fancy ball wearing a homemade lobster costume. – Elizabeth Gilbert, from Big Magic

There is no substitute for intuition. – Paul Klee

It is interesting to observe how real the object remains, in spite of all abstractions. – Paul Klee

There is too much focus on meaning in contemporary art; people want to know what it means. They need to understand. This desire to know is logical if you’re reading a pill bottle, but painting is seldom logical. Seeing a painting takes patience and the willingness to perceive differently. It restacks our priorities in unexpected ways and entices us to notice that which we overlooked. – Brian Rutenberg, from Clear Seeing Place

Painting is easy when you don’t know how, but very difficult when you do. – Edgar Degas

Anything simple always interests me. – David Hockney

Any artist will tell you he’s really only interested in the stuff he’s doing now. He will, always. It’s true, and it should be like that. – David Hockney

All painting, no matter what you are painting, is abstract in that it’s got to be organized. Balance, vibration, weighting, form and eye control, mastery of colour, areas of visual excitement and areas of paucity, grey to rest the eye and gradations: design elements, when intuitively understood, can create a stand-alone magic. In abstraction, this intuition gets your work into the “best” pile. Feel it, and your judges will, too. And just as we’re required to get right the horse’s proportions, abstraction demands that we describe its truth. – David Hockney

Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get the work done. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you’re not going to make an awful lot of work.
– Chuck Close