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Painting Quotes
"If I hadn't started painting, I would have raised chickens."
32
"I was worried in the '80s that the best abstract painting had become obsessed with materiality, and painterly gestures and materiality were up against the wall."
16
"Very quickly a painting is turned into a facsimile of itself when one becomes so familiar with with it that one recognizes it without looking at it."
15
"I think a painting is more like the real world if it's made out the real world."
12
"But when I worked on a painting I would do it from a drawing but I would put certain things I was fairly sure I wanted in the painting, and then collage on the painting with printed dots or painted paper or something before I really committed it."
10
"Painting is the representation of visible forms. The essence of realism is its negation of the ideal."
9
"A portrait is a painting with something wrong with the mouth."
8
"When I am in my painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing."
7
"You don't need a framework. You need a painting, not a frame."
6
"Painting seems like some kind of peculiar miracle that I need to have again and again."
6
"A painting is finished when the subject comes back, when what has caused the painting to be made comes back as an object."
5
"Frankly, these days, without a theory to go with it, I can't see a painting."
5
"Pollock also... wanted one to be wrapped in the painting."
5
"Painting is damned difficult - you always think you've got it, but you haven't."
5
"If I had been around when Rubens was painting, I would have been revered as a fabulous model. Kate Moss? Well, she would have been the paintbrush."
5
"When I finish a painting, it usually looks as surprising to me as to anyone else."
4
"We have as many planes of speech as does a painting planes of perspective which create perspective in a phrase. The most important word stands out most vividly defined in the very foreground of the sound plane. Less important words create a series of deeper planes."
4
"If I didn't start painting, I would have raised chickens."
4
"If you scratch a great photograph, you find two things; a painting and a photograph."
4
"Painting is easy when you don't know how, but very difficult when you do."
4
"I'm not so facile that I can accomplish or find out what I want to know or explore enough of the possibilities and a way of making a painting, say, in just one painting or two paintings."
4
"Well, I've been painting for years. I just started doing a lot more in the last couple."
4
"The dog, the rabbit and the hoop all feature in the painting, and take the place of the orrery."
4
"Around 1980, I went back to painting with a vengeance."
3
"Painting is an infinitely minute part of my personality."
3
"A painting means as much to you as a string of pearls to an ape."
3
"Good painting is the kind that looks like sculpture."
3
"A sculpture is just a painting cut out and stood up somewhere."
3
"Painting's not important. The important thing is keeping busy."
3
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