Lucian Freud Quotes

55 quotes in 525 categories

• The painter's obsession with his subject is all that he needs to drive him to work.
• The only secret I can claim to have is concentration, and that's something that can't be taught.
• I want paint to work as flesh... my portraits to be of the people, not like them. Not having a look of the sitter, being…
• I could never put anything into a picture that wasn't actually there in front of me. That would be a pointless lie, a mere bit…
• I don't want any colour to be noticeable... I don't want it to operate in the modernist sense as colour, something independent... Full, saturated colours…
• The aura given out by a person or object is as much a part of them as their flesh. The effect that they make in…
• I have a hatred of habit and routine. And what dogs love is just that. They like regular everything, and I don't have regular anything.…
• I am only interested in painting the actual person, in doing a painting of them, not in using them to some ulterior end of art.…
• I paint people, not because of what they are like, not exactly in spite of what they are like, but how they happen to be.
• When I look at a body it gives me choice of what to put in a painting, what will suit me and what won't. There…
• I have a timetable, but no routine.
• The painter must give a completely free rein to any feeling or sensations he may have and reject nothing to which he is naturally drawn.
• It is the only point of getting up every morning: to paint, to make something good, to make something even better than before, not to…
• The model should only serve the very private function for the painter of providing the starting point for his excitement
• When I look at a body it gives me choice of what to put in a painting, what will suit me and what won't
• I would wish my portraits to be of the people, not like them. Not having a look of the sitter, being them.
• Painting is sometimes like those recipes where you do all manner of elaborate things to a duck, and then end up putting it on one…
• As far as I am concerned the paint is the person. I want it to work for me just as flesh does
• What do I ask of a painting? I ask it to astonish, disturb, seduce, convince.
• The character of the artist doesn't enter into the nature of the art

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