Artist Quotes by Philip Guston

We are image-makers and image-ridden... We work until we vanish.

— Philip Guston

If the artist starts evaluating himself, it’s an enormous block, isn’t it?

— Philip Guston

Painting is an illusion, a piece of magic, so what you see is not what you see.

— Philip Guston

To paint is a possessing rather than a picturing.

— Philip Guston

Frustration is one of the great things in art. Satisfaction is nothing.

— Philip Guston

Painting seems like impossibility, with only a sign now and then of its own light.

— Philip Guston

More than a process, painting is being possessed...

— Philip Guston

Painting seems like some kind of peculiar miracle that I need to have again and again.

— Philip Guston

Probably the most potent desire for a painter, an image-maker, is to see it. To see what the mind can think and…

— Philip Guston

In my experience a painting is not made with colors and paint at all. I don't know what a painting is; who…

— Philip Guston

It is possible to make a living thing, not a diagram of what I have been thinking: to posit with paint something…

— Philip Guston

I should like to paint like an man who has never seen a painting, but this man -myself - lives in a…

— Philip Guston

That's what I mean by something grips in a canvas. The moment that happens you are then sucked into the whole thing.…

— Philip Guston

I'm not interested in painting; I'm not interested in making a picture. Then what the hell am I interested in? I must…

— Philip Guston

Usually I am on a work for a long stretch, until a moment arrives when the air of the arbitrary vanishes, and…

— Philip Guston

The canvas is a court where the artist is prosecutor, defendant, jury and judge. Art without a trial disappears at a glance.

— Philip Guston

Usually I draw in relation to my painting, what I am working on at the time. On a lucky day a surprising…

— Philip Guston

I have a studio in the country - in the woods - but my paintings look more real to me than what…

— Philip Guston

The things I felt... about certain painters of the past that... inspired me, like Cezanne and Manet... that complete losing of oneself…

— Philip Guston

Then you learn about composition, you learn about old masters, you form certain ideas about structure. But the inhuman activity of trying…

— Philip Guston

It is the bareness of drawing that I like. The act of drawing is what locates, suggests, discovers. At times it seems…

— Philip Guston

Sometimes I scrape off a lot. You have on the floor, like cow dung in the field, this big glob of paint...…

— Philip Guston

Many works of the past complete what they announce they are going to do, to our increasing boredom. Certain others plague me…

— Philip Guston

Studio Ghosts: When you're in the studio painting, there are a lot of people in there with you - your teachers, friends,…

— Philip Guston

No good to paint in the head - what happens is what happens when you put the paint down - you can…

— Philip Guston

To paint is always to start at the beginning again, yet being unable to avoid the familiar arguments about what you see…

— Philip Guston

But you begin to feel as you go on working that unless painting proves its right to exist by being critical and…

— Philip Guston

There comes a point when the paint doesn't feel like paint. I don't know why. Some mysterious thing happens. I think you…

— Philip Guston

When I see people making 'abstract' painting, I think it's just a dialogue and a dialogue isn't enough. That is to say,…

— Philip Guston

I don't know what a painting is; who knows what sets off even the desire to paint? It might be things, thoughts,…

— Philip Guston

Painting is an illusion, a piece of magic, so what you see is not what you see. I don't know what a…

— Philip Guston

Lots of artists who paint have the experience to one degree or another... where their thinking doesn't precede their doing... It's a…

— Philip Guston

All these troubles revolve around the irritable mutual dependence of life and art - with their need and contempt for one another.…

— Philip Guston

Painting and sculpture are very archaic forms. It's the only thing left in our industrial society where an individual alone can make…

— Philip Guston

The painting is not on a surface, but on a plane which is imagined. It moves in a mind. It is not…

— Philip Guston

I do not see why the loss of faith in the known image and symbol in our time should be celebrated as…

— Philip Guston

There are so many things in the world - in the cities - so much to see. Does art need to represent…

— Philip Guston