Elizabeth Peyton

I don't rise to the occasion unless I'm really moved.

— Elizabeth Peyton

I think everybody can be beautiful. Anybody can have beauty. It's about how you look at the world, in a way, and…

— Elizabeth Peyton

I start listening to something, or I'm seeing somebody a lot or seeing their art. And then I just really want to…

— Elizabeth Peyton

I think it is such an amazing moment when people realize what they are and what they can be, and they start…

— Elizabeth Peyton

If art is any good, it has so much of a longer trajectory than one night. Contemporary art is separate from art…

— Elizabeth Peyton

I don't think meeting people that I've done pictures of spoils it at all because I like the really human sides of…

— Elizabeth Peyton

The faces people make when they are photographed and the face they have when you draw them are very different.

— Elizabeth Peyton

No one is famous when they wake up in the morning, so it's nice seeing people in moments when they're just being…

— Elizabeth Peyton

Romanticism is not just about being in a fixed state of endless beauty, because you can't live like that or live on…

— Elizabeth Peyton

I lived in London for a time in the '90s and I love it here. You know, I just go and see…

— Elizabeth Peyton

Theres something in music that fascinates me - how it communicates emotion so immediately. Thats something I wanted in my paintings.

— Elizabeth Peyton

I think little things are more powerful because they're more honest, so people feel them more strongly.

— Elizabeth Peyton

I love the idea that someone I like would have a piece of mine in their house and have a relationship with…

— Elizabeth Peyton

That's what it's all about - making art is making something live forever. Human beings especially - we can't hold on to…

— Elizabeth Peyton

Marie Antoinette: The Portrait of an Average Woman was one of those books I read in my mid-twenties that was life-changing. I…

— Elizabeth Peyton

There's something in music that fascinates me - how it communicates emotion so immediately. That's something I wanted in my paintings.

— Elizabeth Peyton

I like the really human sides of people. To meet them and see that theyre complicated and weird or shy or any…

— Elizabeth Peyton

To paint well, I need to be enraptured by my subjects.

— Elizabeth Peyton

You really need faith in yourself to make art and to stand up for what you believe in.

— Elizabeth Peyton

In 19th-century France, artists were part of government. Artists are very sensitive to their time. They're very thoughtful people - it makes…

— Elizabeth Peyton

A painting of a person can be descriptive, but for me it's about all the things that make up a picture -…

— Elizabeth Peyton