James Thurber Quotes

I prefer to leave the paintings to speak for themselves.

I don't want the pictures to mean things. But the implication of the image and its relationship to the people that are viewing it is something I'm really interested in.

Painting does more than just point to things. The very act of pointing is a value statement.

In every painting, as in any other work of art, there is always an IDEA, never a STORY. The idea is the point of departure, the first cause of the plastic construction, and it is always present all the time as energy creating matter. The stories and other literary associations exist only in the mind of the spectator, the painting acting as the stimulus.

The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art.

Image plays a huge part in my music and in my lifestyle.

I have no ideas about what the paintings imply about the world. I don't think that's a painter's business. He just paints paintings without a conscious reason.

I've always been so surprised by how people interpret my photos in context.

I'm fascinated with what an audience will take away from an image.

With photography a new language has been created. Now for the first time it is possible to express reality by reality. We can look at an impression as long as we wish, we can delve into it and, so to speak, renew past experiences at will.

I'm sure we don't read old paintings the way they were intended.

But empirically I've come to understand that my photographs really don't do any harm.

It is very good advice to believe only what an artist does, rather than what he says about his work.

Style is the substance of the subject called unceasingly to the surface.

I just say I'm an artist who works with pictures and words.

I want the pictures to be working in both directions. I accept that they speak about me, and yet at the same time, I want and expect them to function in terms of the viewer and their experience.

I think most paintings are a record of the decisions that the artist made. I just perhaps make them a little clearer than some people have.

Not all paintings are abstract; they're not all Jackson Pollock. There's value in a photograph of a man alone on a boat at sea, and there is value in painting of a man alone on a boat at sea. In the painting, the painting has more freedom to express an idea, more latitude in being able to elicit certain emotion.

I never analyzed whether I had a style or whether I didn't. I wouldn't be able to describe my style or even tell if I have one or not.

People assume that a self-portrait is narcissistic and you're trying to reveal something about yourself: fantasies or autobiographical information. In fact, none of my work is about me or my private life.

Image-making, along with storytelling and music, is the stuff that culture is made out of.

I feel it's my job as the artist who is making the music to pair it with visuals that I see in my head while writing the music in the first place.

Visual storytelling utilizes both language and art to pass on the essence of who we are.

Much of the way we understand the world is through images. That's what I think good art does - it teaches you how to see the historical moment that you live in.

Clarity is important. Part of what I'm trying to do with some of these pictures is eliminate as much of the potential, as many kind of readings as people might want to make, as possible.