Walter Darby Bannard

Always let intuitive perception precede analysis.

— Walter Darby Bannard

When good ideas get put to bad use, it is the fault of the user, not the idea.

— Walter Darby Bannard

When art writing seems incomprehensible, chances are it is.

— Walter Darby Bannard

Making art is like swimming underwater in a blindfold.

— Walter Darby Bannard

One needs to be right before getting righteous.

— Walter Darby Bannard

Asking art to express ideas is like asking a Sumo wrestler to play charades.

— Walter Darby Bannard

There is no regional art. The only region left is the art magazine.

— Walter Darby Bannard

There is no best way to make art, but there are a lot of better ways.

— Walter Darby Bannard

In art there is no absolute good or bad, but it is absolute that there is good and bad.

— Walter Darby Bannard

What is sublime? / the artist said. / I haven't time / to be well read. / To be sub lime /…

— Walter Darby Bannard

Postmodernism does not facilitate better art. It rationalizes inferior art by wrapping it in words - a suit of armor with nobody…

— Walter Darby Bannard

Good art has everything you need to know about it in the work, not on a wall label. Art is here to…

— Walter Darby Bannard

The power of art is not in communication but effect; what it does, not what it relates.

— Walter Darby Bannard

Good art, no matter how simple or casual-seeming, always carries a high density of choice.

— Walter Darby Bannard

A clear idea about the nature of quality in art will always result in inferior art tailored to it.

— Walter Darby Bannard

Start a painting with fresh ideas, and then let the painting replace your ideas with its ideas.

— Walter Darby Bannard

Don't burden art with words and ideas. Art comes from a deeper place.

— Walter Darby Bannard

Originality is way overrated. To make, you need to take. All great artists do.

— Walter Darby Bannard

When imitation goes over big, it isn't imitation, it is a trend.

— Walter Darby Bannard

There are too many artists, too many dealers and too much art.

— Walter Darby Bannard

Assumptions are usually presumptuous but often correct.

— Walter Darby Bannard

The first duty of intelligence is to recognize the obvious.

— Walter Darby Bannard

Art that wants to be felt does not have the need to be admired.

— Walter Darby Bannard

Postmodernism is silly and joyless at the same time.

— Walter Darby Bannard

Complete freedom debilitates art but reveals much about character.

— Walter Darby Bannard

Too much freedom inhibits choice. Constructive narrowness clarifies choice.

— Walter Darby Bannard

Without the eye, the head is blind. Without the head, the eye is adrift.

— Walter Darby Bannard

Art is making something better without knowing what better is until you make it.

— Walter Darby Bannard

When anything can be art, art is not much of anything.

— Walter Darby Bannard

Power is like money. Some know how to get it; few know how to use it.

— Walter Darby Bannard

We learn to lie by believing words rather than experience.

— Walter Darby Bannard

Part of history is facts. The other part is what we find easier to believe.

— Walter Darby Bannard

Trying to be original is futile. If you have no place to go, stay home and cook.

— Walter Darby Bannard

Art is not truth. Truth conforms to reality. Art invents reality.

— Walter Darby Bannard

Nothing is as hopeless as trying to justify art in words.

— Walter Darby Bannard

You don't have to be a cave man to appreciate Lascaux.

— Walter Darby Bannard

If we see an object as a bowl, it may inhibit seeing it as craft, just as seeing it as craft might…

— Walter Darby Bannard

Great art does not break with the past. It breaks with the present by emulating the best of the past.

— Walter Darby Bannard

When you are painting a landscape, assume the painting is real and the landscape is an illusion.

— Walter Darby Bannard

Stale artifacts of the past' are always 'active components of the present moment' when they are experienced in the present moment.

— Walter Darby Bannard