Howard Hodgkin Quotes

Over the years, my 'Door' paintings have become somewhat mythologized.

I was always making things. Even though art was what I did every day, it didn't even occur to me that I would be an artist.

My real background was in art studies. At the beginning I was a painter, then I was this graphic designer, then I became an illustrator, then I was a comic artist. But for me it's a different way of expression, a different field of art. They're not separated; everything for me is related.

Whatever an artist's personal feelings are, as soon as an artist fills a certain area on the canvas or circumscribes it, he becomes historical. He acts from or upon other artists.

Not to compare an actor to a painter, but you can go through different phases and still be the same artist, y'know?

I feel that I am more aware of my artistry.

I am just beginning to understand what it is to paint. A painter should have two lives, one in which to learn, and one in which to practice his art.

At first you're doing it for yourself, it's about what sounds good to you. It's about expressing yourself. Then you get comfortable as an artist and you find yourself and people get familiar.

In reality, however, an artist is a product of art

A work is never completed except by some accident such as weariness, satisfaction, the need to deliver, or death: for, in relation to who or what is making it, it can only be one stage in a series of inner transformations.

Sometimes for a lot of new artists, they don't have a vision, really, or know what they want to say; it's kind of drawn out for them. But me, because I'm such a transcendental thinker, it's always like a journey and an adventure with each project. It's like going through a different doorway each time.

I think I realized it was an art form at the beginning, but it took me a really long time before I was able to view what I was performing myself as an art form.

We are probably the only artists in the world who have a 2,000-page book on a work of art that doesn't exist. But in this way, these projects reveal their identity through this whole process. When I'm starting, I only have the slightest idea of how the work of art will exist.

Over the years I always did some water colors, and I did a series of pictures of drawings. I always did it during a period of time that was slow in the photo business, but in essence it was always frustrating because I'd get started, and then it would be time to get back to work and I wouldn't get anywhere with the painting.

In life we try to grow and better ourselves. As an artist, I feel like I've grown tremendously.

Being an artist doesn't mean that you're a good artist. That was the bargain I first made with myself: I'd say, I'm an artist, but I'm not really very good.

Art has been good for my soul. And it's been good for my brain. I think I'm a better painter now than I was a musician growing up. You struggle to see things and translate an image through your hands to a canvas.

There does not exist a painter who knows himself or knows what he is doing.

I think it's natural for an artist to explore as they evolve.

It's a great challenge and a wonderful journey how to figure out how to be an artist and to carve my way.

I'm not an Expressionist. I love to look at de Kooning, but I've got this kind of secret life, and that is something that pleases me. I have to try and make something out of it.

The studio is a laboratory, not a factory. An exhibition is the result of your experiments, but the process is never-ending. So an exhibition is not a conclusion.

I think with anything where you delve into the back story of an artist, it kind of explains their work more intimately.

I'm not the kind of artist who has an idea and then carries it out; it's more like I find what the idea was through doing the paintings.

To me I think artists in general make a statement - and for the rest of their lives - every album, every book - are variations on a theme.