Cy Twombly Quotes

Painting is the art of hollowing a surface.

I painted with acrylic paint, and the reason why I went to oil was mainly because I didn't control it. I was looking for the insecurity of it. I mean, I might have found another reason later, but at that moment, the reason was I was looking for the insecurity.

I'm into using acrylic, in a complicated kind of way: Making it just as good as oil paint - better, maybe. It's odd - when I started out, acrylic was for children, pretty much. It was a cheaper paint. It wasn't supposed to look very good or last very long.

I use charcoal a lot. Partly because it has such a fantastic range but also because it is very easy to erase. For me, drawing is a lot to do with taking out, with returning to the white of the paper.

Painters work from the ground up. The latest version of a painting overlays earlier versions, and obliterates them. Writers, on the other hand, work from left to right. The discardable chapters are on the left.

I paint in oils, I paint in acrylics. I paint figurative and landscape portraits. It's all in my own kind of style. I'm self-taught.

I tell young people that the greatest paintings in museums are made with minerals mixed in oil smeared on cloth with the hair from the back of a pig's ear. It's that simple.

I felt I was painting with a Popsicle.

I don't think there is too much art involved in what I do.

I believe the reason I love painting so much is that it forces one to be objective.

I paint on the ground. I paint with sticks, with big paint cans, and whatever else falls in it. Basically, what I'm doing is capturing unbridled emotion and putting it on canvas. It's like capturing lightning in a bottle.

You can't smear acrylics, you know, it dries too fast.

I'm for mechanical art. When I took up silk screening, it was to more fully exploit the preconceived image through the commercial techniques of multiple reproduction.

I went to art college. I like to be creative. I use food as my medium at the moment but it could easily be illustrations in the future, or something else.

Collage is not a kitchen sink; it's not a refuge for the compositionally disabled.

Some art needs to be hung on the wall and stared at inquisitively, while other pieces require a more active approach.

In a photo, you just do a click, but in art you have to put in so much energy. This concentration of energy and attention says something that other media cannot say.

I suppose I consider my work a kind of picture making.

Painting is a lonely, mostly solitary act.

I don't see myself as a photographer. I still see the photographs and collages as a resource for the painting.

All I try to do is put as many colors as I can on the canvas every night.

An artiste's input, her ability to create dimensions within the given space is very important.

Men and words are ready made, and you, O Painter, if you do not know how to make your figures move, are like an orator who knows not how to use his words.

I don't use computers... I'm someone who needs to see the page right away in my hand.

There is a better chance of getting an exciting painting from a laboured study with texture than from a fine drawing without it.