John Rocco Quotes

I do not think my painting has ever been revolutionary. It was not directed against any kind of painting. I have never wanted to prove that I was right and someone else wrong.

I go through the arc of a relationship with every single painting that I do.

I was a fine arts major in college, and a painter for many years. And I found that, like writing, art is very similar.

I remember when Victoria Wood started to come through, and I thought she was great, though she and I are very different in our approach.

I like people that challenge their art, not only in the purist way, but also in terms of how they could provoke and make something different.

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

There are only two styles of portrait painting; the serious and the smirk.

I want a painting to be difficult to do. The more obstacles, obstructions, problems - if they don't overwhelm - the better. I would like to feel that I am involved at any stage of the painting with all its moments, not just this 'now' moment where a superficial grace is so available.

So there is a personal sense of style for a given work - I don't like a general style, but every work has its own style, and I want to create a style for every work.

Mount Tamalpais became my house. For Cezanne, Sainte-Victoire was no longer a mountain. It was an absolute. It was painting.

The crucial discovery was made that, in order to become painting, the universe seen by the artist had to become a private one created by himself.

Decades ago, Gerhard Richter found a painterly philosopher's stone. Like Jackson Pollock before him, he discovered something that had been in painting all along, always overlooked or discounted.

When I'm stuck for a closing to a lyric, I will drag out my last resort: overwhelming illogic.

I've been trying to pick up painting but it's hard.

I want to give my compliments to Australia. Ever since your government paid a few million dollars for a Jackson Pollack painting, I figure that it must be a marvellous country.

I was never interested in making cool, distilled, pure objects.

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.

To paint is the most terrific thing that there is, but to do it well is very difficult.

I love so many different types of music - hard rock, bebop, jazz fusion, R&B. And I've loved meeting and painting so many amazing artists like Lionel Richie, Ronnie Wood, Sia, Steven Tyler, Swizz Beatz, Taylor Swift, James Moody, The Fifth Dimension, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock and Michael Jackson. It makes me smile thinking about each one of them.

The mere drawing and painting world of the pattern designer and the applied artist must become a world that builds again.

I always love long shirt dresses with hand painting on it. It's just wonderful.

Film work is a job I like to do because I really love to solve problems.

The thrill of a photo-realist painter is if you get really close to the painting, it looks just like a photograph. Whereas in my case, if you get close to my paintings, they totally fall apart - so I'm about as far from a photo-realist as it gets.

Once my paintings are complete, the model no longer lives in the painting as themselves. I see something bigger, more symbolic - an archetype.

I'd love to play characters that are so similar to me that it would be crossing limits, and then at the same time I would love to play characters that are so different from me that it would be that kind of challenge as well.