Samuel R. Delany Quotes

I really want to continue doing art. I would love to go back to doing paintings one day.

My primary thing is to make a painting, not necessarily to make a painting to sell for gazillions of dollars, but just to make a painting.

When I make a picture, I make love.

Art is something that opens up and enhances your emotions and that's what I like to think I'm doing.

The artist in me cries out for design.

Well, one always has an instinct to be a painter, and I've done quite a lot of painting at one time or another, though not with any public success.

I make paintings, try to get others to look at them and hopefully buy them.

But where there is no art show, I would still be painting.

In a perfect world, I would be a painter. I love working with my hands. I don't get to do it as much as I like, but I am finding a way to make more time as life goes on because it's a really great outlet for me to express myself.

I used to paint pictures - what happened was, I used to draw and paint pictures. And some of my friends would be, like, 'Yo, you should put that on a T-shirt,' because that's where their brain would go.

I'd never painted anything before. I was quite content to take other people's work since I didn't care anyway about the subject matter. I approached subject matter as a scoundrel. I had nothing to say about it whatsoever. I only wanted to make these exciting paintings.

Do not think that I have stopped painting, for at any moment, I am liable to paint a good picture.

Drawing is the root of everything, and the time spent on that is actually all profit.

The artist begins with a vision - a creative operation requiring an effort.

... a canvas that I have covered is worth more than a blank canvas. My pretensions go no further; that is my right to paint, my reason for painting.

It is not the how of painting but the why. To imitate a style would be a little like teaching a tone of voice or a personality.

A moment of complete happiness never occurs in the creation of a work of art. The promise of it is felt in the act of creation but disappears towards the completion of the work. For it is then the painter realises that it is only a picture he is painting. Until then he had almost dared to hope the picture might spring to life.

If a certain activity, such as painting, becomes the habitual mode of expression, it may follow that taking up the painting materials and beginning work with them will act suggestively and so presently evoke a flight into the higher state.

And that desire-the strong desire to take pictures-is important. It borders on a need, based on a habit: the habit of seeing. Whether working or not, photographers are looking, seeing, and thinking about what they see, a habit that is both a pleasure and a problem, for we seldom capture in a single photograph the full expression of what we see and feel. It is the hope that we might express ourselves fully-and the evidence that other photographers have done so-that keep us taking pictures.

Artists need to express.

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.

Unlike a lot of choreographers, I don't always start with the music. I often start with a visual artist, and then find music that fits the world of that visual artist.

Preliminary drawings or sketches in oil or pastel often have an immediacy and emotional appeal far greater than the final canvas.

The way I create music is maybe like a painting, to compose in a more visual way. Basically it's the music that I want to hear- that's my inspiration and bottom line. I just try to get ideas from books, movies, paintings.