Agnes Martin Quotes

I just think that I'm a person who's trying to find the truth and express it as I, you know, get the opportunity.

To the artist is sometimes granted a sudden, transient insight which serves in this matter for experience. A flash, and where previously the brain held a dead fact, the soul grasps a living truth! At moments we are all artists.

Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth.

One of the great values of the theater is a communal search for truth; I believe that sincerely.

The scholar seeks truth, the artist finds.

Artists don't really want to be marginalized. They believe that everybody should be able to appreciate the experience that an artist gives them, an experience that connects us to each other in a deep way.

You know, artists don't really have all that much experience of life. We make a huge amount out of the small experience that we do have.

See, when I paint, it is an experience that, at its best, is transcending reality.

I'm interested in trying to explore what I think is the truth at a given time in my life, and part of the process of being honest is - in my mind - talking about the idea that you're watching a movie. You're sitting here watching a movie. And I like that. It appeals to me intellectually, and also in a way I can't even explain.

'Mission: Impossible' is fun. But for myself as an artist, I'm really more concerned with the human condition, the human experience, especially from an African American point of view.

Chase after the truth like all hell and you'll free yourself, even though you never touch its coat tails.

In any art, you don't know in advance what you want to say - it's revealed to you as you say it. That's the difference between art and illustration.

If you take a lie and allow your desire for the truth, you'll end up with some truth - not fact, but something that gets you closer to the truth. That's what we want. When we go to a play, we need to be assured that the experience we're having.

But I think that's a particular kind of experience involving a certain immediacy between you and the canvass, you and the particular kind of experience of that particular moment.

We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth, at least the truth that is given to us to understand.

All I've ever done is try to get at the truth of the matter.

Art is nothing but the expression of our dream; the more we surrender to it the closer we get to the inner truth of things, our dream-life, the true life that scorns questions and does not see them.

To be a writer does not mean to preach a truth, it means to discover a truth.

I've always loved the experience of working together with other people toward an artistic goal.

Surely all art is the result of one's having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, where no one can go any further.

Who is God? Who are we? What is our purpose? All these questions remain unanswered. I want to reach the genuine seeker of spiritual well-being. My goal is to satisfy the hunger and longing for those who are seeking the truth.

Art is a reality, not a definition; inasmuch as it approaches a reality, it approaches perfection, and inasmuch as it approaches a mere definition, it is imperfect and untrue.

Art is the window to man's soul. Without it, he would never be able to see beyond his immediate world; nor could the world see the man within.

I do have my own personal convictions and values, and I live by those. But as an artist, as a portrait photographer, my job is to tell the truth and to capture someone's spirit on a certain day. And it's never the whole truth; it's the truth I experience in a very intense and intimate fashion.

It is not meant that the artist, in arriving at truth, must follow the way of the scientist, or, in stating it, the way of the philosopher.