Thelma Golden Quotes

I've heard that many fine artists have to turn their 'finished' paintings to face the wall - otherwise, every time they walk past, they are tempted to pick up a brush and make small adjustments here and there.

If I keep coming back to a painting and there's a little something that bothers me, I know I'm not going to get away with it. I'm going to have to fix it, change it, whatever it is, to something that I'm comfortable with, that doesn't make me itch when I look at it.

I think I missed all of the wonderful things ... I missed the control that you have in film, and I missed getting it right, really getting it right, the way you hope people will see it. All of the things that people love about theater - the fact that it changes every night and that it's so spontaneous - all of those things just frighten me.

Because art as a pursuit, as a concept, as an ideal, constantly elevates one above the pragmatic, one is inclined to discuss art in heightened terminologies. For me, it is just what I do all day long.

I couldn't live if I wasn't a designer.

I paint. I love the visual arts.

My love of fine art increased - the more of it I saw, the more of it I wanted to see.

By the time I was a teenager, I knew I wanted to be an artist. I was a born draftsman and liked all forms of art, so I just knew that's what I wanted to do.

As to the 'St. Michael,' the subject is very fine, but very difficult, so I doubt that I shall find easily amongst my pupils one capable of carrying it out satisfactorily even after my own drawing. In any case, it will be necessary for me to touch it up carefully with my own hand.

I don't want to be a film-maker. I think painting is far more exciting and profound.

I've never said, 'I live for art.'

There hasn't been any art yet. Art is just beginning.

The cult of art gives pride; one never has too much of it.

Art is not living. It is the use of living.

I just like art. I get pure pleasure from it. I have a lot of wonderful paintings, and every time I look at them I see something different.

I look at my paintings for a very long time before letting them out of my studio. I like to get on the treadmill and look around at all of my paintings while I exercise. I try to stare them down to make them reveal their weaknesses. If they reveal weaknesses, they get repainted.

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.

One has complexes. One has the art complex. One goes to the School of Fine Arts and catches the complexes.

I myself saw the great works of Western civilization for the first time in my high school in Lithuania in bad black-and-white reproductions on miserable paper. That was, for many years, what art was for me. But from those miserable black-and-white reproductions, I got something, something unmistakable.

If you're a filmmaker, and every time you finish a film, you just naturally go, 'Oh, I could have done so much better,' that's not much fun, is it, really? You might as well go pick another profession if that really is how you derive satisfaction from it.

I feed on art more than I ever do on photographs. I can admire photography, but I wouldn't go to it out of hunger.

It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.

I love creating. I had been really into photography when I was in college.

I'm Kubrick without the O.C.D.

When I wake up, I can't wait to get to the studio, go into the paint room.