Painting a picture Quotes by Willem de Kooning

The texture of experience is prior to everything else.

— Willem de Kooning

Art should not have to be a certain way,

— Willem de Kooning

I think I'm painting a picture of two women but it may turn out to be a landscape.

— 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 can change…

— Willem de Kooning

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

— 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 becomes historical.…

— Willem de Kooning

The idea of space is given to the artist to change if he can. The subject matter in the abstract is space.

— Willem de Kooning

If I stretch my arms and wonder where my fingers are - that is all the space I need as a painter.

— Willem de Kooning

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

— Willem de Kooning

Flesh was the reason why oil painting was invented

— Willem de Kooning

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

— Willem de Kooning

Maybe in that earlier phase I was painting the woman in me. Art isn't a wholly masculine occupation, you know.

— Willem de Kooning