Sean Scully

I probably use more grays than any other artist in the history of art.

— Sean Scully

I was always artistic - right from childhood - but my love of painting came a bit later. It followed my love…

— Sean Scully

My job is to return abstraction to the people: in a sense, to popularize it without lowering the bar, which is a…

— Sean Scully

My childhood was extremely unhappy. That's not to say that my parents didn't love me. But it was traumatic, and of course,…

— Sean Scully

I do believe abstraction is and was meant to embody deep emotion. I believe that's its job, in the history of art.

— Sean Scully

I was doing an interview with a curator, and he asked me to sum up art in one word. Before he even…

— Sean Scully

I was the only one to go to university, and the last thing my dad wanted was for me to be an…

— Sean Scully

My work is very serious, and I use a lot of black, too.

— Sean Scully

When I got into art school, I thought it was paradise. I wanted to be an artist so much that I was…

— Sean Scully

After my son died, I went to a psychiatrist. He proved - or I proved - that Sigmund Freud was correct when…

— Sean Scully

I started at school. When I painted, all the girls would come and sit around me. I realised that this was a…

— Sean Scully

When I was a young kid at art school, I loved the sensual geometry of Poliakoff, which, of course, is inherent in…

— Sean Scully

I'm Irish in the mythic, romantic sense, but in the living sense, I'm a Londoner.

— Sean Scully

Imagine a world without art: it's George Orwell's nightmare!

— Sean Scully

I am a very spiritual person: I could say a Catholic with a strong underpinning of Zen.

— Sean Scully

If you stand over on the edge of the west coast of Ireland and look west, you are looking at something you…

— Sean Scully

I'm really in the business of unifying these two tendencies that have been at odds in our human history for a very…

— Sean Scully

I don't think writers should have writer's block. I think they should write. Imagine you were a bus driver and you said,…

— Sean Scully

I've always wanted my art to be global rather than local. I want to make paintings that people everywhere can relate to.

— Sean Scully

I work on stretched linen canvas, sized so that the surface already has a sense of tension when I begin. It is…

— Sean Scully

The power of a painting has to come from the inside out, not the outside in. It's not just an image. It's…

— Sean Scully

Art is transformative. It's not 2+2=4. It works like the sea. It changes geography through its constant and relentless movement, just the…

— Sean Scully

When I was a teenager, I was very political.

— Sean Scully

I look at my paintings for a very long time before letting them out of my studio. I like to get on…

— Sean Scully

That's the job of art: to undo the logic of the world.

— Sean Scully