Willem de Kooning

I don't paint to live, I live to paint.

— Willem de Kooning

Art should not have to be a certain way,

— Willem de Kooning

Content is a glimpse.

— Willem de Kooning

Even abstract shapes must have a likeness

— Willem de Kooning

In art one idea is as good as another.

— Willem de Kooning

I have to change to stay the same.

— Willem de Kooning

The texture of experience is prior to everything else.

— Willem de Kooning

You have to keep on the very edge of something, all the time, or the picture dies.

— Willem de Kooning

An artist is someone who makes art... He didn't invent it...

— Willem de Kooning

Watercolors is the first and the last thing an artist does.

— Willem de Kooning

Not even for a million dollars would I paint a tree.

— Willem de Kooning

The past does not influence me; I influence it.

— Willem de Kooning

Flesh was the reason why oil painting was invented

— Willem de Kooning

Even an abstract form has to have a likeness.

— Willem de Kooning

Im not someone whos ever said anything definitive about his work. In my life also I have very little fixed form. I…

— Willem de Kooning

Spiritually I am wherever my spirit allows me to be, and that is not necessarily in the future... Art never seems to…

— Willem de Kooning

It's really absurd to make... a human image, with paint, today, when you think about it... But then all of a sudden,…

— Willem de Kooning

Once, after finishing a picture, I thought I would stop for awhile, take a trip, do things-the next time I thought of…

— Willem de Kooning

Content is a glimpse of something, an encounter like a flash. It's very tiny - very tiny. Content.

— Willem de Kooning

I feel sometimes an American artist must feel, like a baseball player or something - a member of a team writing American…

— Willem de Kooning

The artist fills space with an attitude. The attitude never comes from himself alone.

— Willem de Kooning

What you do when you paint, you take a brush full of paint, get paint on the picture, and you have faith.

— Willem de Kooning

I read somewhere that Rubens said students should not draw from life, but draw from all the great classic casts. Then you…

— Willem de Kooning

Man's own form in space - his body - was a private prison; and that it was because of this imprisoning misery…

— Willem de Kooning

I'm not interested in 'abstracting' or taking things out or reducing painting to design, form, line, and color. I paint this way…

— Willem de Kooning

Whatever an artist's personal feelings are, as soon as an artist fills a certain area on the canvas or circumscribes it, he…

— Willem de Kooning

If you pick up some paint with your brush and make somebody's nose with it, this is rather ridiculous when you think…

— Willem de Kooning

The drawings that interest me most are made with closed eyes. With eyes closed, I feel my hand slide down on the…

— Willem de Kooning

My interest in desperation lies only in that sometimes I find myself having become desperate. Very seldom do I start out that…

— Willem de Kooning

The point they (Lissitzky, Rodchenko, Tatlin, Gabo, the neo-Plasticists, and so on) all had in common was to be inside and outside…

— Willem de Kooning

Whatever an artist's personal feelings are, as soon as an artist fills a certain area on the canvas or circumscribes it, he…

— Willem de Kooning

When, about fifteen years ago, I walked into Arshile's studio for the first time, the atmosphere was so beautiful that I got…

— Willem de Kooning

The word 'abstract' comes from the light tower of the philosophers. One of their spotlights that they have particularly focused on 'Art'.…

— Willem de Kooning

Art never seems to make me peaceful or pure.

— Willem de Kooning

I make pictures and someone comes in and calls it art.

— Willem de Kooning

An artist is forced by others to paint out of his own free will.

— Willem de Kooning

Style is a fraud. I always felt the Greeks were hiding behind their columns.

— Willem de Kooning

The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all your time.

— Willem de Kooning

The problem with property is that it takes so much of your time.

— Willem de Kooning

I'd like to get all the colors in the world into one painting

— Willem de Kooning