Caio Fonseca

The world of painting has nothing to do with the art world.

— Caio Fonseca

So many paintings have hidden meanings or need wall texts, but my work is not in that category.

— Caio Fonseca

My 20s were spent in a room, alone, mixing paints and figuring it all out.

— Caio Fonseca

It's not until the very last phase that you know how good the works are going to be.

— Caio Fonseca

All my siblings became artists. One's a novelist, my brother is a painter, my sister was a costume designer.

— Caio Fonseca

Painting is something that requires a lot of time - it's not just one good idea out of art school.

— Caio Fonseca

Most days, I practice piano in the mornings and I spend the rest of the day painting.

— Caio Fonseca

Most people draw from the mind, not the eye. They draw the idea of a table or a face, not what's in…

— Caio Fonseca

If you come every day or every month to my studio, you won't see that much change, but if you come once…

— Caio Fonseca

I've been playing piano my whole life, but I'd never tried to understand how compositions are made, really. Try to imagine if…

— Caio Fonseca

I was never exposed to art school. I grew up in an artist's studio. I was exposed a lot of studio time…

— Caio Fonseca

When I have a creative block, I take walks. I like to see what shapes stick out - so many legs rushing…

— Caio Fonseca

My uniform is sweatpants, so crusted over with dried paint that they're as hard as a table. I wear T-shirts that are…

— Caio Fonseca

I think I was very lucky to have grown up with an artist's studio in the house. It was a kind of…

— Caio Fonseca

I try not to bring in anything I don't love looking at. It's about restaint ... There is something about an unfinished…

— Caio Fonseca

I'm not particularly interested in painting, per se. I'm interested in a painting that has that mysterious life to it. Anything that…

— Caio Fonseca

This morning I got up early and I was glazing the paintings and they just looked so beautiful. I had a private…

— Caio Fonseca

I had a visit from an artist friend who basically said, "Your paintings are wonderful. Now stop." It did resonate with me.…

— Caio Fonseca

My forms are not abstractions of things in the real world. They're also not symbols. I would say that my job is…

— Caio Fonseca

One of the most important elements of Caio-ness I wanted to keep was that left to right reading, where one form draws…

— Caio Fonseca

I underwent a whole process of slowly letting go of idiosyncrasies and habits and embellishments and everything extraneous to the essentials that…

— Caio Fonseca

Everyone accepts the abstraction of Bach. My work aspires to the same kind of abstraction, which is so engaging that you're distracted…

— Caio Fonseca

People see so many things in the paintings. Although I never think of them, it charms me a little bit that people…

— Caio Fonseca

For me becoming a painter was an Everest, in terms of what I thought a painter was. There are many roads to…

— Caio Fonseca

My forms are not abstractions of things in the real world. They're also not symbols. I would say that my job is…

— Caio Fonseca

I've been playing piano my whole life but I'd never tried to understand how compositions are made really. Try to imagine if…

— Caio Fonseca

I'm not such an artist type that I can't handle the real world. I read the financial pages, because most people don't…

— Caio Fonseca