Howard Hodgkin Quotes

My painting does not come from the easel.

When I'm painting the picture, I'm really painting a picture. I may have a flat-footed technique, or something like that, but still, to me, the thrill, or the meat of the thing, is the actual painting. I don't get any thrill out of laying it out.

There are these painterly things that happen while I'm working.

I start a picture and I finish it.

Some people would say my paintings show a future world and maybe they do, but I paint from reality. I put several things and ideas together, and perhaps, when I have finished, it could show the future.

I am like a folk painter. Paint and move ahead.

You cannot possibly invent painting all by yourself.

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

Painting is seen as picture making, the making of an art object, something that can stand on its own.

All I try to do is put as many colors as I can on the canvas every night.

When I'm drawing, I'm drawing with the light, being completely open and creative. I can't draw in the evening. I need light and I need warmth if it is a summer thing, and I need cold if it is a winter collection. The good thing is that I have houses to go to whenever I'm working. I draw according to the place.

Painting is damned difficult - you always think you've got it, but you haven't.

I don't think you can lightly paint a picture. It's an activity I take very seriously.

I love creating images, of course, because I'm an artist.

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.

I dream of painting and then I paint my dream.

The only thing in life that really gives me any peace is just being lost in the process of creating something, whether it's the film or painting and drawing, which has been a big part of my life, for a long time.

Painting is a coalescing of experience.

Would that we could at once paint with the eyes! In the long way from the eye through the arm to the pencil, how much is lost!

For me, drawing is a way of navigating the imagination, and it remains the fundamental vehicle of my practice. Drawing allows me to be at my most inventive.

When you make a painting, even abstract, there is always a sort of necessary filling-in.

Well, painting is the one thing I do, that is just me. It's me and easels, and the pencils. And as long as I don't drool too much over the canvas, the colors come out pretty good. And it's a chance to express all that I've got inside, that I sometimes keep hidden. And I think that's why I paint big broad, wide open landscapes.

Art is not about thinking something up. It is the opposite - getting something down.

For me, Picasso was the ultimate man. He taught me that photography is all about how you approach an image: what you do and what you don't do. He inspired me to go beyond what you think is in front of you.

The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through.