More Quotes - On Artistic Process II

“You have to reduce in order to be clear.” Luc Tuymans

“Art proves itself in the making…I don’t want to see the world in any personal way. I have no aesthetic problem and the technique of making is immaterial. There’s no distinction between paintings, and I would like to change my methods as often as appropriate.” Gerhard Richter

“The physicality of the painting is important, whereas I don’t think the depiction of psychological states can give the same impact, the same strangeness, the same directness – or indirectness”. Luc Tuymans

“Certainty is the less safe option” Gerhard Richter

“When you are in front of a painting, you’re in front of the place where whoever made that work was, and you see the process of the making…” Jenny Saville

“You realise that you can’t represent reality at all – that what you make represents nothing but itself, and therefore, is itself reality….I’m not trying to imitate a photograph, I’m trying to make one.” Gerhard Richter

Image: Gabrielle Jones, "Sofala" 2008 Oil on Canvas 110x 83cm

More Quotes-On being an artist

“Manure, roses, rubbish and straw –like good and bad artworks one produces- all serve a different function in the garden.” John Young

“The desire to reveal involves the terror of doing so.” Elizabeth Murray

“The pleasure of painting proves its necessity…Painting has a brilliant future, hasn’t it?” Gerhard Richter

“One has to believe in what one is doing. One has to commit oneself inwardly, in order to do a painting. Once obsessed, one ultimately carries it to the point of believing that one might change human beings through painting. But if one lacks this passionate commitment, there is nothing left to do. Then it is best to leave it alone. For basically, painting is total idiocy.” Gerhard Richter

“You don’t just move into the future, you drag a past.” Larry Rivers

“What paintings have you learned from? From everyone that I know” Gerhard Richter

“I steer clear of definitions, I don’t know what I want. I am inconsistent, non- committal, passive. I like continual uncertainty. Other qualities may be conducive to achieving publicity, success, but they are all outworn…” Gerhard Richter.

“Now that there are no priests or philosophers left, artists are the most important people in the world” Gerhard Richter

“Painting is intrinsically capable of giving visible form to our best, most human, most humane qualities:”. Gerhard Richter

“The difference between success and failure, winning and losing, is a thin grey line defined as self belief.” (Author unknown to me)

“(Clarice Beckett’s) life is concerned with the in-between moments, the ones we almost forget but which are the stuff of much of our lives…in painting the external world she captures the inner state….Her enduring message is that to make and look at art is to delve into unfamiliar and often uncomfortable territory” Jenny Bell, Art in Australia

Image: Gabrielle Jones "Plateau" 2008, Oil on Canvas, 110x 83cm