Damian Loeb Quotes:

I read that prior to the advent of color TV, most people dreamed in black and white.

Topics: Black And White, Color, People

The advent of the digital age and the immediacy and convenience of digital video and photography allows people to become an integral part of the feedback loop which actively shapes the content we are fed.

Topics: Photography, People, Age, Loops, Digital Age

I always thought being an artist was a lazy job. I was wrong.

Topics: Jobs, Artist, Lazy

I love seeing things that work in the micro and work in the macro.

source: - Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

We discard the personal specifics which don't conform to the ideal conventional beauty created by art directors and cinematographers.

source: - "Damian Loeb Brings Hyperrealism To Another Level (NSFW PHOTOS)", www.huffingtonpost.com. July 30, 2013.

Topics: Art, Directors, Conform, Specifics, Art Director

When we as a society lose the ability to comment on what we see and to have an opinion on what we are exposed to, then we have all lost what makes us unique on this planet.

Topics: Unique, Opinion, Lost

I dont think I talk to anybody the same way I talk to Moby.

Topics: Thinking, Way

Beauty has became a pejorative word in art. It was not something one should aspire to, because it was pedestrian. Beautiful things became cheap and easy. If it's cheap and easy, then upper classes aren't going to aspire to it. So, they have to find something more esoteric. I wanted the paintings to be realistic enough that you would have the ability to forget that I'm showing them to you.

source: - Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

Topics: Beautiful, Art, Painting

I don't try to force-feed it or put any things on the images until I'm making a painting. It's not photorealism. Photorealism's goal is to reproduce a photograph. The best photorealism can't beat a printer, and I have a really nice printer. I don't want to go blind doing what a printer can do.

source: - Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

Topics: Nice, Goal, Trying

Photorealism was this fantastic movement in like the late '60s and '70s, because photography finally became something that everyone could produce. Photorealism was and should've been a very short element. But the thing is, photography is so satisfying. Certainly when it's well done.

source: - Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

Topics: Photography, Done, Fantastic

Every single painting is different. I'm always trying to figure out what I'm interested in. Usually when I go through and I make the collages or the images for ideas that I want to paint, it's like an Ouija board. Each painting I do is trying to understand what the hell I'm looking at, or want to look at.

source: - Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

Topics: Trying, Different, Painting

Fondness for people can be terrifying, because it's intangible and it can disappear, or it can be taken away, or you can say the wrong thing. A million things, so it's so uncomfortable. So when you suddenly become aware of it because they don't call you or something for half an hour or whatever, you lose it.

source: - Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

Topics: Taken, People, Hours, Fondness

I try to write art theory down and understand it but I'm not a writer. I don't want to impress people with my writing. I'd rather impress people with my ability to see and feel it and then share that.

source: - Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

Topics: Art, Writing, People

I've always wished that I had a great ability to verbalize art theory and find a way that I fit in to the whole lineage, but I don't have a clue.

source: - Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

Topics: Art, Clue, Fit

It's been so much a part of my life the thinking that I go through is crucial. I found that if I don't paint for around a week, I get practically suicidal. It took a long time to figure out why I had these mood swings, and I finally figured out it's because I haven't painted.

Topics: Suicidal, Thinking, Long, Mood Swing

We're making so many images today and it's unbelievable. I shoot stuff all the time. I try to figure a lot out before I paint. I do a tremendous amount of shooting.

source: - Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

Topics: Trying, Today, Paint

Photorealism says: to fool your eye. That isn't what I've been interested in doing.

source: - Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

Topics: Eye, Fool

Every time I have people over, I watch how long they look at every part of the painting, or pictures on my computer. I have a few close friends and people that are constants. Whether I like their opinion or not, I've been hearing it for a long time and I can use it as this constant. I mentally pay attention to how long they look at every image, which ones they pause on and what parts of it they look at.

Topics: Long, People, Attention

I'm interested in visual vocabulary, like Andy Warhol was interested in that vocabulary of advertisements and television and pop culture. I do a great deal of tropes. This past decade has seen a new term, "meme," which is exactly what I'm studying.

Topics: Past, Culture, Study, Pop Culture

Star Wars came out when I was seven. It was so different from anything else, like peeking into the land of Oz. All you wanted to do was see it again and go back and see more of it. That feeling is not easy to reproduce. Eventually, you give up and try to recreate that feeling yourself.

source: - Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

Topics: Giving Up, War, Feelings

I'm a painter, I'm an artist. I take things too far sometimes. I really need some comfort.

source: - Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

Topics: Artist, Comfort, Sometimes

The landscape is one of the kinds that I think, at least this body of work is the least selfish of the stuff that I've done. It's all selfish. It is making images of things that I want to see, that turn me on, that make me happy, that satisfy me.

source: - Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

Topics: Selfish, Thinking, Done

There's the people who have one of these cell phones in their pockets and don't have a clue how it's made. But I really want to understand.

source: - Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

Topics: People, Clue, Cell Phone

Each painting, I feel like I kind of might have gotten something. If I feel like I totally got it, there's probably something wrong and it's not finished. And if I really feel like I understand it then I'm done with these paintings and I'll have to do something else.

source: - Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

Topics: Done, Painting, Kind

Every show I've done, I've just wanted to understand something of this weird life that I woke up in. I've never woken up in anyone else's life, so I've got to understand this one. The only skill I was given is this painting.

source: - Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

Topics: Done, Painting

I wanted to finally feel better about understanding. I painted my wife because I wanted to understand her. I can talk to her, but I didn't understand why I was so compelled.

source: - Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

Topics: Feel Better, Wife, Understanding

I started getting afraid of dying. I don't have any religion and I wanted to understand something about these greater powers without anthropomorphizing it.

source: - Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

Topics: Dying

Now that I'm a father of three kids, suddenly the whole world seems different. I don't want to take anything for granted. If you gaze on something and you appreciate it, you become a part of that circle. That seemed to me to be the only relevance I could understand. The space, the time and the vastness of it all was overwhelming. I needed to understand it or I just was lost.

Topics: Father, Kids, Appreciate

All I want to do is realism and follow the tradition of realism. And explore what realism should be now be after the ubiquity of smartphones. I'm trying to answer the question. I don't think I'll ever have the words, but hopefully I'll have a few images.

source: - Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

Topics: Thinking, Trying, Tradition

Every art critic and every writer doesn't have a frame to start off from. If I made a statement saying, "This is Abstract Expressionism," they could go, "Well, he failed miserably," or, "Fantastic, this is a new genius!" But in art history, I don't see any of the artists I like spewing bullshit. I don't see anyone recording it or pronouncing what they were doing.

Topics: Art, Bullshit, Genius