Eva Hesse Quotes

I've always been somebody who, when I started a picture, never knew what the next picture would be.

Artwork is not like a commercial business; there is no such thing as a schedule for art. You can't hurry art.

I don't pick and choose subjects or settings; they pick and choose me.

Writing is like jazz. It can be learned, but it can't be taught.

I never know what I'm going to put on the canvas. The canvas paints itself. I'm just the middleman.

I enjoyed art in school. I've always done little drawings and stuff like that. I don't really know what I'm doing with the painting, but I experiment.

I never have a plan of what I am going to draw.

The artist discards all theories, both his own and those of others. He forgets everything when he is in front of his canvas.

Being creative is my idea of heaven. I'm just incredibly fortunate that I can do it in artwork. Watercolor is what I started out with. What I love about watercolor is that a lot of happy accidents occur.

I paint according to the moment and the theme. I don't have any prejudice. Life concerns me.

I want to do just, like, regular art. Whatever is made today on canvas goes up against all of art history. It's the most radical thing.

If you look at art history, at Goya or Gainsborough, it's always about acknowledging the people of your time who have influence.

Artists today think of everything they do as a work of art. It is important to forget about what you are doing - then a work of art may happen.

One of the few things that will remain of this time is what artists are doing. They are the journal and the diary of our time.

Music is supposed to be inspired.

When I put my brush to canvas, I never know what I'm going to paint. It's like when you're walking down the street with your hands in your pockets, humming a tune, you don't know what you'll be humming five minutes from now.

The music always takes us to different places. We'll just continue to play and see what doors open from there.

The thing about the creative process is it's so chaotic.

I think all my films have a different journey. Therefore, I take it as it comes.

The way I did the first album... the way I wrote 'Church'... was just to trust my instincts with the music and let it kind of do what it does.

I really like writing poetry and lyrics because it's one thing where I give up control. I don't feel like I need to be in control of it. I just sort of let it happen, and then I know when it's done. I know when it's finished.

You know, we never really know what we're going to write next. Which is part of the excitement when we go in and do a new album. No battle plan, we just go in and do it and what comes out, comes out.

The real artist's work is a surprise to himself.

Everything that I saw became something to be made, and it had to be exactly as it was, with nothing added. It was a new freedom: there was no longer the need to compose. The subject was there already made, and I could take from everything. It all belonged to me: a glass roof of a factory, with its broken and patched panels, lines on a road map, a corner of a Braque painting, paper fragments in the street. It was all the same: anything goes.

Some professional writers write everyday no matter what and perhaps that's the way it should be done, but it's not the way I do it. If I'm not pregnant with words and I'm not in labor with them, I don't even try to bring them forth because they won't be any good anyway. Once I'm ready to deliver, it's like being pregnant. I've got to find a typewriter or a piece of paper. The only words that have ever had any possible value to others seem to have been those words that just had to come out.