Ralph Gibson Quotes

Geometry is moribund. I want a lilt and joy to art.

I'm drawn to silhouettes because of their emblematic rather than their illustrational quality. I see them as shapes, allowing an image to become an abstraction and for pure painting to take place.

When you're working with an object, you can put in almost anything you want, you can make it abstract.

When you make a painting, even abstract, there is always a sort of necessary filling-in.

My forms are not abstractions of things in the real world. They're also not symbols. I would say that my job is to invent these forms and to put them together in a way that keeps your interest, to give the forms a quirky identity so you can engage with them, so you realize there's an inner intelligence or logic.

I look at graphic design as communication, meaning that the work has to have a vibe to connect to the viewer or perceiver. I make a black and white drawing and then add color digitally, bringing in a contemporary pattern to the composition to create a vibrance.

The job of the color photographer is to provide some level of abstraction that can take the image out of the daily.

Painting will have to deal more fully and less obliquely with life and nature's phenomena before it can again become great.

Art is when things appear rounded.

I choose colors I like and will photograph well. I don't do color theory!

The colors live a remarkable life of their own after they have been applied to the canvas.

I've learned to create a palette, a vocabulary of ways to take pictures.

Artistic tricks divert from the effect that an artist endeavors to produce, and even excellent elements such as bullets, arrows, brackets, ornate initials, are at best superficial ornamentation unless logically employed.

I don't think money can help you become a better painter, for sure. You can have all the studios you want; it won't help you make a better painting.

I paint with shapes.

If I can say one thing for my pictures, it is a certain craftsmanship. A thought which has gone into every angle. There is nothing there without an optical reason.

Pure drawing is an abstraction. Drawing and colour are not distinct, everything in nature is coloured.

I didn't discover curves; I only uncovered them.

Approach nature in terms of the cylinder, the sphere, and the cone ...

I really like the language of painting.

Obviously, the cinematography of films is art, just as a still shot can be art. If I'm watching a Wes Anderson movie, the colour palettes alone, and the way they're painted, could be art. With music, you're a little bit limited, of course, because it's only audio.

I love a well composed shot. It doesn't necessarily have to be beautiful, but it must be well composed.

In art school, you learn that design is much more than the look and feel of something - it's the whole experience.

I like to create a sound and then leave it behind.

Even an abstract form has to have a likeness.