Sean Scully Quotes

I don't labor over my drawings. I want to get freedom in the line.

During the winter when the weather is too poor to work outside, I do use drawings and photographs, but I change my work so it is not just a time and place study.

I think of a piece, and then people who are competent fabricate it. But lately I've started finger painting, which probably should be a joke but isn't!

My painting does not come from the easel.

Sometimes you don't want to get married too much to a lot of rehearsing, I feel, when it comes to film, because there's so many technicalities. So if I'm in my head, I've gotten settled on something, I'm gonna have to change it if I get there and something was set that's completely different.

When I begin, theoretically and practically I can smear anything I want on the canvas. Then there's a condition I have to react to, by changing it or destroying it.

I never talk about books in progress. I could decide to change it to a series of seafood recipes, after all.

I have no fear of making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own.

I think it's bad to talk about one's present work, for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It discharges the tension.

A movie and a stage show are two entirely different things. A picture, you can do anything you want. Change it, cut out a scene, put in a scene, take a scene out. They don't do that on stage.

I hardly ever stretch the canvas before painting.

My songs are really never titled. Sometimes I call it one thing. then I change it.

Painting on the ground was a cool challenge because you can't just stand back and see what you're doing.

I don't like to try to put, like, 'Let's do this type of record,' 'cause it never turns out that way anyways.

I like to leave things open, and even when I write out the story ahead of time, it always changes. I don't think I would finish anything if I was sticking to a plan that was very rigid.

For those colours which you wish to be beautiful, always first prepare a pure white ground.

I believe I have had the most trouble with a portrait which I painted in installments - the head on one canvas and the bust on another.

I don't work from drawings and colour sketches into a final painting. Painting, I think, today - the more immediate, the more direct - the greater the possibilities of making a direct - of making a statement.

I’m an author. We don’t want to lead. We don’t need to follow. We stay home and make stuff up and write it down and send it out into the world, and get inside people’s heads. Perhaps we change the world and perhaps we don’t. We never know. We just make stuff up.

I never retouch a sketch: I take a canvas the same size, as I may change the composition somewhat. But I always strive to give the same feeling, while carrying it on further.

I throw down the gauntlet to chance. For example, I prepare the ground for a picture by cleaning my brush over the canvas. Spilling a little turpentine can also be helpful.

I try not to have too specific notions because it messes up the process later on. I leave it very open to interpretation until I start casting. Everything changes a lot when you start casting. I mean everything.

There is the potential for much more spontaneity with prints than there is with the sculpture, which tends to be very slow, accretive kind of process-labor intensive.

All my work begins with drawings. I don’t labor over my drawings. I want to get freedom in the line. I like to be able to get swift curves in the plant drawings that are usually drawn in five to ten minutes.

I couldn't say there is a formula to songwriting. Each time is a unique experience.