Painting and sculpture are very archaic forms. It's the only thing left in our industrial society where an individual alone can make something with not just his own hands, but brains, imagination, heart maybe. — Philip Guston Copy Share Image
That's what I mean by something grips in a canvas. The moment that happens you are then sucked into the whole thing. Like some… — Philip Guston Copy Share
Then you learn about composition, you learn about old masters, you form certain ideas about structure. But the inhuman activity of trying to make… — Philip Guston Copy Share
I go to the studio everyday because one day I may go and the Angel will be there. What if I don't go and… — Philip Guston Copy Share
Sometimes I scrape off a lot. You have on the floor, like cow dung in the field, this big glob of paint... and it's… — Philip Guston Copy Share
Painting seems like impossibility, with only a sign now and then of its own light. — Philip Guston Copy Share
Many works of the past complete what they announce they are going to do, to our increasing boredom. Certain others plague me because I… — Philip Guston Copy Share
Probably the most potent desire for a painter, an image-maker, is to see it. To see what the mind can think and imagine, to… — Philip Guston Copy Share
No good to paint in the head - what happens is what happens when you put the paint down - you can only hope… — Philip Guston Copy Share
The canvas you are working on modifies the previous ones in an unending, baffling chain which never seems to finish. What sympathy is demanded… — Philip Guston Copy Share
I do not see why the loss of faith in the known image and symbol in our time should be celebrated as a freedom.… — Philip Guston Copy Share
The things I felt... about certain painters of the past that... inspired me, like Cezanne and Manet... that complete losing of oneself in the… — Philip Guston Copy Share
I am a night painter, so when I come into the studio the next morning the delirium is over. — Philip Guston Copy Share
Usually I am on a work for a long stretch, until a moment arrives when the air of the arbitrary vanishes, and the paint… — Philip Guston Copy Share
All these troubles revolve around the irritable mutual dependence of life and art - with their need and contempt for one another. Of necessity,… — Philip Guston Copy Share
