Painting is, I think, inevitably an archaic activity and one that depends on spiritual values.

For me nature is not landscape, but the dynamism of visual forces.

In my earlier paintings, I wanted the space between the picture plane and the spectator to be active.

As a painter today you have to work without that essential platform. But if one does not deceive oneself and accepts this lack of certainty, other things may come into play.

I used to build up to sensation, accumulating tension until it released a perceptual experience.

Focusing isn't just an optical activity, it is also a mental one.

Painting is, I think, inevitably an archaic activity and one that depends on spiritual values.

There was a time when meanings were focused and reality could be fixed; when that sort of belief disappeared, things became uncertain and open to interpretation.

An artist's early work is inevitably made up of a mixture of tendencies and interests, some of which are compatible and some of which are in conflict.

I work with nature, although in completely new terms.

His failures are as valuable as his successes: by misjudging one thing he conforms something else, even if at the time he does not know what that something else is.

Painters have always needed a sort of veil upon which they can focus their attention. It's as though the more fully the consciousness is absorbed, the greater the freedom of the spirit behind.

As the artist picks his way along, rejecting and accepting as he goes, certain patterns of enquiry emerge.

I think this lack of a center has something to do with the loss of certainties that Christianity had to offer.

The craft of painting has virtually disappeared. There is hardly anyone left who really possesses it. For evidence one has only to look at the painters of this century.

I don't know if it was the whole audience getting stoned out of their minds getting ready for the Floyd thing or what it was, but it was like playing to a painting.

Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.

I don't like painting flowers in my music. I like painting guts and pain.

Painting is a faith, and it imposes the duty to disregard public opinion.

If the weather is good I go into the nearby wood - there I am painting a small beech forest (in the sun) with a few conifers mixed in. This takes until 8 'o clock.

The paintings may communicate even better because people are lazy and they can look at a painting with less effort than they can read a poem.

Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum.

The worlds I paint leave a lot to engage the imagination by hinting at what lies beyond the four edges of the painting. I think getting beyond the four edges of an opportunity or challenge is one of the basic skills you need in business.

When I was in art college, I would be painting, and I would create something on a canvas that was actually quite attractive. But if I got frightened and tried to protect that, that canvas would die.

My movement from painting to film was a very conscious one.

I believe that painting should come through the avenues of meditation rather than the canals of action.

For example, in painting the form arises from abstract elements of line and color, while in cinema the material concreteness of the image within the frame presents - as an element - the greatest difficulty in manipulation.

Coming to understand a painting or a symphony in an unfamiliar style, to recognize the work of an artist or school, to see or hear in new ways, is as cognitive an achievement as learning to read or write or add.

I see architecture not as Gropius did, as a moral venture, as truth, but as invention, in the same way that poetry or music or painting is invention.

Painting... in which the inner and the outer man are inseparable, transcends technique, transcends subject and moves into the realm of the inevitable.

When we don't have information, we go to the simplest outlook, to black and white. But then we have to lie to ourselves. Black is never as black as you're painting it and white is never as white.

I was not out to paint beautiful pictures; even painting good pictures was not important to me. I wanted only to help the truth burst forth.

Painting is a nail to which I fasten my ideas.

Painting is a hobby for me.

I'm a secretive bastard. I would never let anybody watch me painting... it would be like somebody watching you have sex - painting is that personal to me.

Good painting is the kind that looks like sculpture.

Well, I am not interested in the kind of expression that you have when you paint a painting with brush strokes. It's all right, but it's already done and I want to do something new.

There are certain things in which mediocrity is not to be endured, such as poetry, music, painting, public speaking.

Landscape is to American painting what sex and psychoanalysis are to the American novel.

Well, let's say we acknowledged the School of French Painting - the Paris School of painting as the leading force and vitality of the time. I think that was understood and felt and experienced.

I don't work from drawings. I don't make sketches and drawings and color sketches into a final painting.

I don't understand it. Jack will spend any amount of money to buy votes but he balks at investing a thousand dollars in a beautiful painting.

No one is an artist unless he carries his picture in his head before painting it, and is sure of his method and composition.

The secret to so many artists living so long is that every painting is a new adventure. So, you see, they're always looking ahead to something new and exciting. The secret is not to look back.

There are only two styles of portrait painting; the serious and the smirk.

This truth must be recognized as a dogma and assume the validity of an axiom in the general understanding of painting.

Photography suits the temper of this age - of active bodies and minds. It is a perfect medium for one whose mind is teeming with ideas, imagery, for a prolific worker who would be slowed down by painting or sculpting, for one who sees quickly and acts decisively, accurately.

A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery.

People whose understanding and taste in literature, painting, and music are beyond question are, for the most part, ignorant of what is good or bad art in the theater.