Rachel Kushner Quotes

A painter may be looking at the world in a way which is very different from everyone else. If he's a craftsman, he can get other people to see the world through his eyes, and so he enlarges our vision, perception, and there's great value in that.

Painting is a nail to which I fasten my ideas.

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.

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.

Art points to things. It's a way of giving people not the standard way of looking at the world.

In art, one does not aim for simplicity; one achieves it unintentionally as one gets closer to the real meaning of things.

An odd contradiction, if the layman were correct in his unconscious assumption that an artist begins with reality and ends with art: the converse is true - to the degree that this dichotomy has any truth - the artist begins with art, and through it arrives at reality.

Through art, you create your own world.

I really admire artists that are willing to take a different approach and a different angle to their shows.

Painting is the passage from the chaos of the emotions to the order of the possible.

I'm an artist that's attracted to a specific way of seeing and a way of being.

Art is something that opens up and enhances your emotions and that's what I like to think I'm doing.

I wasn't exposed to art as I was growing up, and can't recall the first time I saw a work of art. However, I remember very clearly a vision I had of a little green reindeer when I was a child, and visions emanate from the same mythical area where painting resides. Whatever the reason, I immediately felt comfortable working with visual materials.

There's no way to really mock up or simulate what I'm doing until I'm there. An exhibition for me is not a statement but an experiment.

Making art is different for everyone.

Art is an investigation.

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

Art is not for the cultivated taste. It is to cultivate taste.

I have a healthy view of what one can do with art.

Art is always a search for understanding, and the different levels and frequencies of that search feel completely comfortable and natural to me.

What I've discovered is that in art, as in music, there's a lot of truth-and then there's a lie. The artist is essentially creating his work to make this lie a truth, but he slides it in amongst all the others. The tiny little lie is the moment I live for, my moment. It's the moment that the audience falls in love.

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.

I think when somebody's painting they don't necessarily... I'm not illustrating what I know. I'm mapping out, like topographically, some terrain I am satisfied with, how awkward that mark is.

I spend my time trying to figure art out. I was brought up to believe that the way one processes information is by making it into art. That's how I live my life.

Art does not reproduce what we see; rather, it makes us see.