Yves Tanguy Quotes

I don't even think about maintaining a relevance. I just think about what do I want to paint, what am I gonna do now, what am I gonna do later.

Artwork is not like a commercial business; there is no such thing as a schedule for art. You can't hurry art.

I prefer to surprise myself as I'm writing. I'm not interested in it if I already know where it's going. So I have only the most general sense of what I'm doing when I start a story. I sometimes have a destination in mind, but how the story is going to go from Point A to Point Z is something I make up as I go along.

I never know what I'm going to put on the canvas. The canvas paints itself. I'm just the middleman.

The songs come along at their own pace when they are ready.

The thing about the creative process is it's so chaotic.

There's never anything planned. I just do what I feel is best for the song at that time.

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.

I think half the point of painting a picture is that you don't know what will happen... that if painters did know what was going to happen they wouldn't bother to do it.

If you understand a painting beforehand, you might as well not paint it.

One never knows what one is going to do. One starts a painting and then it becomes something quite different.

When I stand before a canvas, I never know what I'll do, and I am the first one surprised at what comes out.

I have an idea of a set of colors and see what I have. A lot of things, the best, more magical things in the paintings just sort of happen. They aren't things I thought of in advance. They are more things I am given. What paint does, in watercolor more than oil but it happens in oil too, are things one never expects if you work freely. I suppose I learned a lot coming to this after years of playing improvisational music. I have to trust my intuition and I work in the moment, when that moment seems to be happening. And to leave it alone when it is not.

I foresee it and yet I hardly ever carry it out as I foresee it. It transforms itself by the actual paint. I don't in fact know very often what the paint will do, and it does many things which are very much better than I could make it do.

I always have a good reason for taking something out but I never have one for putting something in. And I don't want to, because that means that the picture is being painted predigested.

I'm very interested to see how this new painting will go - I know I want it big and stark, and as I said, I follow the muse, and that's when it always works perfectly for me.

You don't know what inspires you. You like to think you know what inspires you, but in the final analysis I don't think you really do. It's great to look at a blank sheet of paper, you know, and walk up to an instrument and not know what's gonna happen. It's the most challenging thing I do.

When I'm painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. It's only after a get acquainted period that I see what I've been about. I've no fears about making changes for the painting has a life of its own.

Painters have always needed a sort of veil upon which they can focus their attention. It's as though the more fully the consciousness is absorbed, the greater the freedom of the spirit behind.

I'm a great believer in chaos. I don't believe that you start with a formula and then you fulfill the formula. Chaos is a much better instigator, because we live in chaos - we don't live in a rigorous form.

When I write, I don't have any expectation of what kind of song it will become or who it might reach.

When I start writing songs and it turns into an overly belabored intellectual process, I just throw it out.

The artist discards all theories, both his own and those of others. He forgets everything when he is in front of his canvas.

The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through.

Being creative is my idea of heaven. I'm just incredibly fortunate that I can do it in artwork. Watercolor is what I started out with. What I love about watercolor is that a lot of happy accidents occur.