Gerhard Richter Quotes

I often use hypothetical situations to generate information and imagery for paintings and to create a fictional space where a subject can be put into play.

The more we see the more we must be able to imagine, and the more we imagine, the more we must think we see.

I never take any notes or draw charts or make elaborate diagrams, but I hold an image of the shape of a book in my head and work from that mental hologram.

Sometimes I see it and then paint it. Other times I paint it and then see it. Both are impure situations, and I prefer neither.

First comes thought; then organization of that thought, into ideas and plans; then transformation of those plans into reality. The beginning, as you will observe, is in your imagination.

An idea can only be materialized with the help of a medium of expression, the inherent qualities of which must be surely sensed and understood in order to become the carrier of an idea.

A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.

I have a visual imagination.

I think that an artist is a bit like a computer. He receives information from the world around him and from his past and from his own experiences. And it all goes into the brain.

I'm just interested in meditating on certain ideas, and I like to draw: that's my way of thinking.

I look out the window sometimes to seek the color of the shadows and the different greens in the trees, but when I get ready to paint I just close my eyes and imagine a scene.

My art originates from hallucinations only I can see. I translate the hallucinations and obsessional images that plague me into sculptures and paintings.

If I don't have a model in front of me, I don't have an idea.

I would just sketch everything that was being made for the collections.

I start with an idea in my head. I sketch it out quickly as a line drawing, using pencil. It never comes out quite right - usually a bit better than my mental picture.

In the same way I accumulate objects, I also accumulate images, and I find them arranging themselves into categories, too. And some images insist on being painted; others don't.

When someone is on the phone telling me a story, I'm hearing the soundtrack that goes with it.

I'm always seeing stuff and imagining scenes in my head when I'm making music.

No one can ever create art, even on a piece of paper, as they have envisioned it in their mind.

To make art you need to be inspired.

The facts, even the real ones, must be imagined before they can be stated.

Thinking is seeing.... Every human science is based on deduction, which is a slow process of seeing by which we work up from the effect to the cause; or, in a wider sense, all poetry like every work of art proceeds from a swift vision of things.

Once I can focus in on something, I just play it in my mind until an idea comes from out of nowhere, and it's usually the key to the whole song. It's the idea that matters. It's like electricity was around long before Edison harnessed it.

If I can't picture it, I can't understand it.

I have titles floating around in my head; I have sculptures floating around in my head. It's like a collage.