I paint people not because of what they are like, not exactly in spite of what they are like, but how they happen to be.
From Lucian Freud
I remember Francis Bacon would say that he felt he was giving art what he thought it previously lacked. With me, it's what Yeats called the fascination with what's difficult. I'm only trying to do what I can't do.
I want paint to work as flesh.
My work is purely autobiographical... It is about myself and my surroundings.
Now that I know what I want, I don't have to hold on to it quite so much.
Painting is sometimes like those recipes where you do all manner of elaborate things to a duck, and then end up putting it on one side and only using the skin.
Since the model he so faithfully copies is not going to be hung up next to the picture... it is of no interest whether it is an accurate copy of the model.
The character of the artist doesn't enter into the nature of the art.
The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real.
The model should only serve the very private function for the painter of providing the starting point for his excitement.
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