Elaine de Kooning quotes

Elaine de Kooning quotes

last updated: November 28, 2023

“A painting to me is primarily a verb, not a noun, an event first and only secondarily an image.”
-- Elaine de Kooning

Source : "It is", No.4, Magazine for Abstract Art, Second Half Publishing Co., New York pp. 29, 30, Autumn, 1959.

#Events Quotes #Verbs Quotes #Nouns Quotes
“Every artist returns to things. The drawings that you make as a child or as an adolescent and the ideas that you have as a young beginning artist, no doubt they crop up again and again.”
-- Elaine de Kooning

#Children Quotes #Artist Quotes #Ideas Quotes
“I'm more interested in character. Character comes out of the work. Style is applied or imposed on it.”
-- Elaine de Kooning

#Character Quotes #Style Quotes
“Artists are like cockroaches; everything is grist for the mill.”
-- Elaine de Kooning

#Artist Quotes #Cockroaches Quotes #Mills Quotes
“Women can also be creative in total isolation. I know excellent women artists who do original work without any response to speak of. Maybe they are used to lack of feedback. Maybe they are tougher.”
-- Elaine de Kooning

#Artist Quotes #Creative Quotes #Isolation Quotes
“Inspiration is indispensable to my work, but it is hard to come by. It is there or it is not; it is a gift of the gods.”
-- Elaine de Kooning

#Inspiration Quotes #Indispensable Quotes
“I made my first trip west of the Hudson and it was a revelation. The naked musculature of the Rockies was overpowering and my painting responded.”
-- Elaine de Kooning

#Naked Quotes #West Quotes #Firsts Quotes
“For one thing, I want gesture-any kind of gesture, all kinds of gesture-gentle or brutal, joyous or tragic; the gesture of space soaring, sinking, streaming, whirling; the gestures of light flowing or spurting through color. I see everything as possessing or possessed by gesture. I've often thought of my paintings as having an axis around which everything revolves.”
-- Elaine de Kooning

#Color Quotes #Space Quotes #Light Quotes
“Art has been hijacked by nonartists. It's been taken over by bookkeeping. The whole thing is so corrupt. But I suppose that's okay. For artists, everything is grist for the mill. Artists are like cockroaches; we can't be stamped out.”
-- Elaine de Kooning

#Art Quotes #Taken Quotes #Cockroaches Quotes

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