Wayne Thiebaud Quotes

31 quotes in 494 categories

• A conscious decision to eliminate certain details and include selective bits of personal experiences or perceptual nuances, gives the painting more of a multi-dimension than…
• Every paint-stroke takes you farther and farther away from your initial concept. And you have to be thankful for that.
• Art means something very rare, an extraordinary achievement.
• I haven't the slightest idea what art is, but to be a painter is something of which you have to prove.
• Art is not delivered like the morning paper; it has to be stolen from Mount Olympus.
• Commonplace objects are constantly changing… The pies, for example, we now see, are not going to be around forever. We are merely used to the…
• If we don't have a sense of humor, we lack a sense of perspective
• An artist has to train his responses more than other people do. He has to be as disciplined as a mathematician. Discipline is not a…
• Common objects become strangely uncommon when removed from their context and ordinary ways of being seen.
• My subject matter was a genuine sort of experience that came out of my life, particularly the American world in which I was privileged to…
• Discipline is not a restriction but an aid to freedom.
• An artist needs the best studio instruction, the most rigorous demands, and the toughest criticism in order to tune up his sensibilities.
• Morandi suggests we are all single in this world, hoping for independent repose. But our best opportunity for a community of excellence depends upon a…
• If I don't have anything better to do that day, I'll copy paintings, generally by people who have some relationship to the work of the…
• We all need critical confrontation of the fullest and most extreme kind that we can get. You can unnecessarily limit yourself by choosing your criticism...
• Diebenkorn was a very good critic, a very tough critic, tough on himself, tough on others. He expected the finest.
• As far as I'm concerned, there is only one study and that is the way in which things relate to one another.
• The figures... are not supposed to reveal anything... It's like seeing a stranger in some place like an air terminal for the first time. You…
• I'm a believer in the notion that artists who do good work believe in the ideas of extremes.
• I think of myself as a beginner. Sometimes that's the whole joy. If you could just do it, there'd be no point in doing it.

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