Gotthold Ephraim Lessing Quotes

When I'm painting and drawing I only do people. Acting is obviously portraiture - and writing is as well.

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.

A painting is finished when the subject comes back, when what has caused the painting to be made comes back as an object.

I show elements of the set in my pictures because it's not real. When I see movies, I often love the 'making of' more than the movie itself. It's not so final. When you have a woman just standing there, it doesn't mean much.

If we could but paint with the hand what we see with the eye.

To give a body and a perfect form to one's thought, this - and only this - is to be an artist.

When I first made a grid, I happened to be thinking of the innocence of trees, and then a grid came into my mind and I thought it represented innocence, and I still do, and so I painted it and then I was satisfied. I thought, 'This is my vision.'

Photography is an immediate reaction, drawing is a meditation.

What is art if not a concentrated and impassioned effort to make something with the little we have, the little we see?

All art is a kind of exploring. To discover and reveal is the way every artist sets about his business.

Art flies around truth, but with the definite intention of not getting burnt. Its capacity lies in finding in the dark void a place where the beam of light can be intensely caught, without this having been perceptible before.

When I'm drawing, I'm drawing with the light, being completely open and creative. I can't draw in the evening. I need light and I need warmth if it is a summer thing, and I need cold if it is a winter collection. The good thing is that I have houses to go to whenever I'm working. I draw according to the place.

It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.

Science provides an understanding of a universal experience. Arts provide a universal understanding of a personal experience.

I start a picture and I finish it.

Designis a revelation to me. It's like taking something that is not alive and giving it form, shape, substance, and life.

I love creating images, of course, because I'm an artist.

Some people would say my paintings show a future world and maybe they do, but I paint from reality. I put several things and ideas together, and perhaps, when I have finished, it could show the future.

I love to create, and to me, the ultimate freedom of expression is a blank canvas or a block of clay to capture whatever emotions your imagination gives it.

I dream of painting and then I paint my dream.

The body is your instrument in dance, but your art is outside that creature, the body.

I try to give people a different way of looking at their surroundings. That's art to me.

The creative act amazes me. Whether it's poetry, whether it's music, it's an amazing process, and it has something to do with bringing forth the old out into the world to create and to bring forth that which will rejuvenate.

For me, drawing is a way of navigating the imagination, and it remains the fundamental vehicle of my practice. Drawing allows me to be at my most inventive.

I try and make little stories. Whether it's with a pencil or with bits of records, it's really the same thing.