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"When I finish a painting, it usually looks as surprising to me as to anyone else."
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"With a painting, you don't have to go back and paint it again."

"Good painting is the kind that looks like sculpture."

"A sculpture is just a painting cut out and stood up somewhere."

"If you scratch a great photograph, you find two things; a painting and a photograph."

"I have not written in vain if I have heretofore done anything towards diminishing the reputation of the Renaissance landscape painting."

"The dog, the rabbit and the hoop all feature in the painting, and take the place of the orrery."

"One of the most difficult things to do is to paint darkness which nonetheless has light in it."
Explore more quotes by Howard Hodgkin

"A painting is finished when the subject comes back, when what has caused the painting to be made comes back as an object."

"I want my pictures to be things. I want them to be made up of marks that are physically and individually self-sufficient."

"I find old copies of National Gallery catalogues, which are written in the dryest possible prose, infinitely soothing."

"In England, it's thought to be morally suspect to worry about what your surroundings look like."

"I'm vulnerable to criticism. Any artist is, because you work alone in your studio and, until recently, critics were the only way you'd get any feedback."

"Matisse was very clear about saying that you have to blow your own trumpet and explain yourself, which I think has been slightly forgotten."

"I don't look at the work of my contemporaries very much; I tend to look at pictures by dead artists. It's much easier to get near their paintings."
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