Agnes Martin Quotes

38 quotes in 415 categories

• The adventurous state of mind is a high house... The joy of adventure is unaccountable. This is the attractiveness of artwork. It is adventurous, strenuous…
• That which takes us by surprise-moments of happiness-that is inspiration.
• Pollock was terrific. I think he freed himself of all kinds of worry about this world. Ran around and dripped, and then he managed to…
• You can't make a perfect painting. We can see perfection in our minds. But we can't make a perfect painting.
• I hope I have made it clear that the work is about perfection as we are aware of it in our minds but that the…
• When I think of art I think of beauty. Beauty is the mystery of life. It is not in the eye it is in the…
• My paintings are certainly nonobjective. They're just horizontal lines. There's not any hint of nature. And still everybody responds, I think.
• What I say is that we're capable of a transcendent response, and I think it makes us happy. And I do think beauty produces a…
• I think our minds respond to things beyond this world. Take beauty: it's a very mysterious thing, isn't it? I think it's a response in…
• The enormous pitfall is devotion to oneself instead of to life. All works that are self-devoted are absolutely ineffective.
• The worst thing you can think about when you’re working is yourself,
• I'm very careful not to have ideas, because they're inaccurate.
• Doing what you were born to do … That's the way to be happy.
• When I first made a grid I happened to be thinking of the innocence of trees and then this grid came into my mind and…
• I once taught art to adults in a night course. I had a woman who painted her back yard, and she said it was the…
• Anything can be painted without representation.
• Fulfill your potential. That's the way to happiness.
• Happiness is being on the beam with life - to feel the pull of life
• Any material may be used but the theme is the same and the response is the same for all artwork... we all have the same…
• I would like my work to be recognized as being in the classical tradition (Coptic, Egyptian, Greek, Chinese), as representing the Ideal in the mind.…

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