Cliff Chiang Quotes

As an artist, you want to play around with mediums and see if you can get the point across in different way.

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.

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!

It doesn't matter if you don't have a complete set of anything because repetition creates pattern, repetition creates pattern, repetition creates pattern.

The dripping... well, if it happens, it happens; it does not take anything from the work. The dripping just proves that you were not trying to control the work, but the work was developing by itself and if it drips, it's a natural part in the evolution of the work.

I continue to get further away from the usual painter's tools such as easel, palette, brushes, etc.

Oil-painting is a developed technique. Why go backwards?

Most people think an artist tries to be original, but originality is the last thing that develops in the artist.

Just as Pollock used the drip to meld process and product, Richter 'found' and used the smudge and the blur to ravish the eye, creating works of psychic and physical power.

It doesn't make much difference how the paint is put on as long as something has been said. Technique is just a means of arriving at a statement.

I'll take anything and slap it on a canvas.

Most of the power of painting comes through the manipulation of space... but I don't understand that.

I don't think that much anymore in terms of 'write a record, record a record, tour a record,' because in my own mind, things have changed, in that I'm just an ongoing artist. I'm not quite sure what the next project needs to be until it presents himself, and then I know. I just follow dutifully while I'm being led.

All my wire sculptures come from the same loop. And there's only one way to do it. The idea is to do it simply, and you end up with a shape.

Sometimes in a sculpture, it's interesting to me what's stylized and what's natural and how those forms interrelate, as they interrelate in ourselves.

I'm inspired by Jackson Pollock; splashing layer upon layer, using different materials, experimenting with new methods to produce something fresh. I'd love to be able to create in this way!

Ballet, there's a right way to do things, and it's black and white, and it's all striving for perfection. Acting is not that way. It's very gray, and the messier you can be, the better. The mistakes that you make are the gold and the beautiful stuff.

Any change in my style depends on many things, but it's whatever fits the project. It's important to me to make style changes from time to time; it makes me feel alive as an artist. For instance, with 'Moonshine,' I'm doing all my own coloring. That's a new development!

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

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.

A contemporary artist like Grayson Perry is brilliant partly because of his expert knowledge of art history, not despite it.

Sometimes I sketch and then scan my sketch directly to make the curves more freehand. I don't want to make perfect industrial curves.

When you create stuff, you're always going to be progressing and where you're at a year down the line, as the creator, it's always going to feel immature. You're going to notice the flaws and the things that you've learned in that year aren't going to be there. So, I think it's important to see stuff as a capture of time - that's what I was doing at that time - and not be ashamed of it. That's how I try to approach music.

Mine was not pop art. I maybe started with a subject, but I changed the subject.

Perfection is no more a requisite to art than to heroes.