Philip Guston Quotes

46 quotes in 685 categories

• More than a process, painting is being possessed...
• There is something mysterious in this work that I do not ever what to discover.
• Usually I am on a work for a long stretch, until a moment arrives when the air of the arbitrary vanishes, and the paint falls…
• There's some mysterious process at work here, which I don't even want to understand.
• In my experience a painting is not made with colors and paint at all. I don't know what a painting is; who knows what sets…
• Painting and sculpture are very archaic forms. It's the only thing left in our industrial society where an individual alone can make something with not…
• To paint is a possessing rather than a picturing.
• Painting is an illusion, a piece of magic, so what you see is not what you see.
• No good to paint in the head - what happens is what happens when you put the paint down - you can only hope that…
• Frustration is one of the great things in art. Satisfaction is nothing.
• I do not see why the loss of faith in the known image and symbol in our time should be celebrated as a freedom. It…
• Painting seems like some kind of peculiar miracle that I need to have again and again.
• You know, comments about style always seem strange to me - 'why do you work in this style, or in that style' - as if…
• If the artist starts evaluating himself, it’s an enormous block, isn’t it?
• Painting is an illusion, a piece of magic, so what you see is not what you see. I don't know what a painting is; who…
• I go to the studio everyday because one day I may go and the Angel will be there. What if I don't go and the…
• Look at any inspired painting. It's like a gong sounding; it puts you in a state of reverberation.
• I am a night painter, so when I come into the studio the next morning the delirium is over.
• When I see people making 'abstract' painting, I think it's just a dialogue and a dialogue isn't enough. That is to say, there is you…
• We are image-makers and image-ridden... We work until we vanish.

Browse Philip Guston Quotes by Category