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I Think The Ambiguity Of Similarity And Difference Is Very Powerful. It's The Same Scene In Different Times Of Year Read Across The Grid, And, Of Course, Different Locations Reading Vertically. But You Can Get Confused And Lost In The Series. You Force The Mind, Which Is Always Comparing And Contrasting, To Stumble ... That Ambiguity Is Very Powerful. One Is Getting Lost And Refinding Oneself.

-David Hockney

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I Think The Ambiguity

David Hockney

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I Think The Ambiguity Of Similarity And Difference Is Very Powerful. It's The Same Scene In Different Times Of Year Read Across The Grid, And, Of Course, Different Locations Reading Vertically. But You Can Get Confused And Lost In The Series. You Force The Mind, Which Is Always Comparing And Contrasting, To Stumble ... That Ambiguity Is Very Powerful. One Is Getting Lost And Refinding Oneself.

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I Was Aware That The Teaching Of Drawing Was Being Stopped Almost 30 Years Ago. And I Always Said, 'the Teaching Of Drawing Is The Teaching Of Looking.' A Lot Of People Don't Look Very Hard.

I've Realized That I Can Do Performances.

The Urge To Draw Must Be Quite Deep Within Us, Because Children Love To Do It.

I'm A Very Early Riser, And I Don't Like To Miss That Beautiful Early Morning Light.

I Went To Art School Actually When I Was Sixteen Years Old.

I Think Probably Something Big Can Be Done With Cameras, I'm Not Saying, Er, I'm Saying Chemical Photography's Finished, That Means You Can't Have A Cartier Bresson Again, You Need Never Believe Pictures.

Drawing Is Rather Like Playing Chess: Your Mind Races Ahead Of The Moves That You Eventually Make.

I Think We're In A Very Exciting Time - Visually, I Think We Are. I've Not Got A Crystal Ball. I'm Not Saying I Know What The Future Is At All. In Some Ways I'm Getting Quite Pessimistic About The Future, But In Other Ways I Think It Might Get Better. We Are Moving Into Very Big Changes.

What An Artist Is Trying To Do For People Is Bring Them Closer To Something, Because Of Course Art Is About Sharing. You Wouldn't Be An Artist Unless You Wanted To Share An Experience, A Thought.

Well You Can't Teach The Poetry, But You Can Teach The Craft.

I'm Sure That The Camera Is Part Of European Art.

I Do Believe That Painting Can Change The World.

Changing The World

We All Know A Mirror Reflects Us, If You Look In It. If You Move, The Reflection Moves. If You Project From A Mirror, Meaning It Will Project An Image, It's Nothing To Do With You. The World Seen By Nobody.

Who's Going To Ask A Painter To See A Diploma? They'd Say, 'can I See Your Paintings?', Wouldn't They?

Style Is Something You Can Use, And You Can Be Like A Magpie, Just Taking What You Want.

I've No Doubt That Those Photographs I Took Will Make People Look At Everything In A More Interesting Way - The Little Tear On One Piece Of Paper, The Shadow On Another. But Good Painting Has Always Done That - Made You See Things. And The Most Ordinary Can Be The Most Extraordinary.

Technology Brought In The Mass Media And Technology Is Now Taking It Away.

Loads Of People, Particularly Artists, Hate Pretty Pictures. Now I've Never Met Anyone Who Didn't Like A Pretty Face.

With Chemical Film, It Was Possible To Alter Photographs, But You Had To Be An Expert. That's Not True Any More. The La Times Fired A Photographer At The Beginning Of The Iraq War For Editing Two Shots Together. Photography Is Crumbling. Certainly It Is For The Newspapers A Bit Now, Isn't It? There Will Be Painting Again, Absolutely!

I Was Always Struck By How Picasso Had No Interest In Music.

The Moment You Cheat For The Sake Of Beauty, You Know You're An Artist.

Well, In Bradford I Could Say I Was Brought Up In Bradford And Hollywood.

When You're Very Young, You Suddenly Find This Marvellous Freedom. It's Quite Exciting, And You're Prepared To Do Anything.

No Theoretician, No Writer On Art, However Interesting He Or She Might Be, Could Be As Interesting As Picasso. A Good Writer On Art May Give You An Insight To Picasso, But, After All, Picasso Was There First.

I Made A Photograph Of A Garden In Kyoto, The Zen Garden, Which Is A Rectangle. But A Photograph Taken From Any One Point Will Not Show, Well It Shows A Rectangle, But Not With Ninety Degree Angles.

I'm Interested In All Kinds Of Pictures, However They Are Made, With Cameras, With Paint Brushes, With Computers, With Anything.

I Had Always Planned To Make A Large Painting Of The Early Spring, When The First Leaves Are At The Bottom Of The Trees, And They Seem To Float In Space In A Wonderful Way. But The Arrival Of Spring Can't Be Done In One Picture.

It's Very British To Go About To See Something Unusual And Paint It.

What The Art Historians Had Forgotten Is That In Chinese, Japanese, Persian, And Indian Art, They Never Painted Shadows. Why Did They Paint Shadows In European Art? Shadows Are Because Of Optics. Optics Need Shadows And Strong Light. Strong Light Makes The Deepest Shadows. It Took Me A Few Years To Realize Fully That The Art Historians Didn't Grasp That. There Are A Lot Of Interesting New Things, Ideas, Pictures.

East Yorkshire, To The Uninitiated, Just Looks Like A Lot Of Little Hills. But It Does Have These Marvelous Valleys That Were Caused By Glaciers, Not Rivers. So It Is Unusual.

I Am Constantly Preoccupied With How To Remove Distance So That We Can All Come Closer Together, So That We Can All Begin To Sense We Are The Same, We Are One.

The Video Camera Dominates Art. It's A Bore, It Makes Everything Look A Bit The Same. If You Look At Things With A Pencil And Paper In Your Hand, You Are Going To See Far More.

I'm Fed Up With Being Bossed Around.

There's A Chinese Proverb That Says It All: Painting Is An Old Man's Art.

The Choice Is Not Between Drugs And No Drugs, But Between Illegal Drugs And Legal Drugs. Until The 1920s Drugs Were Legal, Why Not Now? Lots Of People Are On Drugs Anyway - It Is Called Medication.

If We Are To Change Our World View, Images Have To Change.

I Never Talk When I'm Drawing A Person, Especially If I'm Making Line Drawings. I Prefer There To Be No Noise At All So I Can Concentrate More.

You Can't Name The Inventor Of The Camera. The 19th-century Invention Was Chemical: The Fixative.

We Don't All See The Same Way At All. Even If I'm Sitting Looking At You, There Is Always The Memory Of You As Well. And A Memory Is Now. So Someone Who's Never Met You Before Is Seeing A Different Person. That's Bound To Be The Case. We All See Something Different. I Assume Most People Don't Look Very Hard At Anything.

There Are Enough No Smoking Places Now.

The Lens Is A Tyranny.

Anyway I Feel Myself A Bit On The Edge On The Art World, But I Don't Mind, I'm Just Pursuing My Work In A Very Excited Way. And There Isn't Really A Mainstream Anymore, Is There?

I've Always Been A Looker. Loads Of People Say, "i Never Saw That" - But That's What Artists Do.

I'm Very Attracted To The Great Open Spaces Of The West.

The History Of Photography Needs Clearing Out. It Needs Something Else Now. Because Photography Always Acknowledged There Were Cameras Before Photography.

Modernism In A Way, Early Modernism, For Instance, In Pictures, Was Turning Against Perspective And Europe. And All Early Modernism Is Actually From Out Of Europe, When You Think Of Cubism Is African, Is Looking At Africa, Matisse Is Looking At The Arabesque, Oceania. Europe Was The Optical Projection That Had Become Photography, That Had Become Film, That Became Television And It Conquered The World.

Enjoyment Of The Landscape Is A Thrill.

I've Finally Figured Out What's Wrong With Photography. It's A One-eyed Man Looking Through A Little 'ole. Now, How Much Reality Can There Be In That?

There's No Need To Believe What An Artist Says. Believe What He Does; That's What Counts.

Painting And Drawing Has Been Here For 35,000 Years.

Most Artists Work All The Time, They Do Actually, Especially Good Artists, They Work All The Time, What Else Is There To Do? I Mean You Do.

It's A Myth That If You're Liked By Only Four People It Must Be Good. It Might Also Be Very Bad: They Might Be Your Mother, Your Brother, Your Uncle And Your Aunt.

...all Along I've Had An Ambivalent Relationship To Photography - But As To Whether I Thought It An Art Form, Or A Craft, Or A Technique, Well, I've Always Been Taken With Henry Geldzahler's Answer To That Question When He Said, I Thought It Was A Hobby.

If You Go Too Far With Naturalism, There Is No Need To Even Organize; Just Look... And Paint What You See Until The Canvas Ends.

You Can't Believe Any Picture Nowadays, If It's Digital. You Can't Really Believe. If You See Me Shaking Hands With Mr. [barack] Obama, It Doesn't Mean I Ever Met Him, Does It?

No Matter What The Illusion Created, It Is A Flat Canvas And It Has To Be Organized Into Shapes.

Just Because I’m Cheeky, Doesn’t Mean I’m Not Serious

In My Old Age, I'll Be In L.a.

You Had To Be Aware That I Saw That Photography Was A Mere Episode In The History Of The Optical Projection And When The Chemicals Ended, Meaning The Picture Was Fixed By Chemicals, We Were In A New Era.

I Haven't Stopped Painting Or Drawing - I've Just Added Another Medium.

I Was Always Interested In Photography Because It Makes A Picture.

It's Difficult To Talk About Colour, Even Remember Colour Actually.

I Thought The Iphone Was Great, But This Takes It To A New Level - Simply Because It's Eight Times The Size Of The Iphone, As Big As A Reasonably-sized Sketchbook... Anyone Who Likes Drawing And Mark-making Will Like To Explore New Media.

Photographs Aren't Accounts Of Scrutiny. The Shutter Is Open For A Fraction Of A Second.

And Then I Went Round The Corner And There's A Van Gogh Portrait, And You Just Think, Well, This Is Another Level. A Higher Level, Actually. I Love The Sargent, But It's Not The Level Of Van Gogh.

It Is Difficult To Say Why I Decided I Wanted To Be An Artist. Obviously, I Had Some Facility, More Than Other People, But Sometimes Facility Comes Because One Is More Interested In Looking At Things, Examining Them, More Interested In The Visual World Than Other People Are.

Yes, I Did, I Mean I Painted Er, In A Kind Of Abstract Expressionist Way, Because Of Course That Was Exciting.

I Think I’m Greedy, But I’m Not Greedy For Money – I Think That Can Be A Burden – I’m Greedy For An Exciting Life. I Want It To Be Exciting All The Time, And I Get It, Actually. On The Other Hand, I Can Find Excitement, I Admit, In Raindrops Falling On A Puddle And A Lot Of People Wouldn’t. I Intend To Have It Exciting Until The Day I Fall Over.

I Have Got An Ipad, What A Joy! Van Gogh Would Have Loved It, And He Could Have Written His Letters On It As Well.

The Camera Can't See Space. It Sees Surfaces. People See Space, Which Is Much More Interesting.

Time Is The Great Mystery Anyway. And It's Still The Great Mystery In The Moving Picture As Well.

Future Art That Is Based On Appearances Won't Look Like The Art That's Gone Before. Even Revivals Of A Period Are Not The Same.

Who Would Have Thought That The Telephone Would Bring Back Drawing?

Of Course You Can Still Paint Landscape - It's Not Been Worn Out.

Drawing Takes Time. A Line Has Time In It

Shadows Sometimes People Don't See Shadows. The Chinese Of Course Never Paint Them In Pictures, Oriental Art Never Deals With Shadow. But I Noticed These Shadows And I Knew It Meant It Was Sunny.

I Have Always Believed That Art Should Be A Deep Pleasure. I Think There Is A Contradiction In An Art Of Total Despair, Because The Very Fact That The Art Is Made Seems To Contradict Despair.

On The Iphone I Tended To Draw With My Thumb. Whereas The Moment I Got To The Ipad, I Found Myself Using Every Finger.

I Think I Am Seeing More Clearly Now Than Ever.

I Love California; Everything Is So Artificial.

I'm Rather Shocked By What I Thought Was Simple Mindedness Actually. I Thought They're Not Looking, They're Not Actually Looking.

In The End Nobody Knows How It's Done — How Art Is Made. It Can't Be Explained. Optical Devices Are Just Tools. Understanding A Tool Doesn't Explain The Magic Of Creation. Nothing Can.

There Would Be No Bohemia Without Smoking.

Water In Swimming Pools Changes Its Look More Than In Any Other Form Its Colour Can Be Man-made And Its Dancing Rhythms Reflect Not Only The Sky But, Because Of Its Transparency, The Depth Of The Water As Well. If The Water Surface Is Almost Still And There Is A Strong Sun, Then Dancing Lines With The Colours Of The Spectrum Appear Everywhere.

As For The World Of Fashion And Celebrity, I Have The Usual Interest In The Human Comedy, But The Problems Of Depiction Absorb Me More.

Water Colours Are Wet Colours In Water.

I Can See That Cinema Seems To Be Finished. Everybody Has A Bigger Screen At Home. I'm Assuming Eventually You Won't Need A Screen At All - These Iphones Will Just Project.

All Film Directors, Even The Ones Using 3-d Today, Want You To Look At What They Chose.

In Fact, Most Artists Want To Make Things A Bit More Difficult For Themselves As They Go Along, To Challenge Themselves.

There Is Nothing Wrong With Photography, If You Don't Mind The Perspective Of A Paralysed Cyclops.

I Usually Only Draw Myself In Down Periods... I Suppose That's Why I Often Draw Myself Looking Grim. I Just Think, 'let's Have A Look In The Mirror.' When You Are Alone And You Look In A Mirror You Never Put On A Pleasing Smile. Well, You Don't, Do You?

I Avoid The Public Because The English Public Is Too Aggressive These Days For Me.

I Worked In The Nhs As A Hospital Orderly During My National Service, And People Thought It Was A Noble Service. But Over The Years It's Lost Its Humanity.

I Have Always Believed That Art Should Be A Deep Pleasure...ther E Is Always, Everywhere, An Enormous Amount Of Suffering. But I Believe My Duty As An Artist Is To Overcome And Alleviate The Sterility Of Despair...new Ways Of Seeing Mean New Ways Of Feeling... I Do Believe That Painting Can Change The World.

It's All Right If You Don't Mind Looking At The World From The Point Of View Of A Paralyzed Cyclops—for A Split Second.

I Was Never That Interested In Movies. I Was Interested In Them As A Thing, But I Didn't Want To Make Movies. I Always Wanted To Draw And Paint.

I Draw Flowers Every Day And Send Them To My Friends So They Get Fresh Blooms Every Morning.

Cubism Was An Attack On The Perspective That Had Been Known And Used For 500 Years. It Was The First Big, Big Change. It Confused People: They Said, 'things Don't Look Like That!'

The Vanishing Point Leads To The Missiles Of Today, Which Can Take Us Out Of This World. It Could Be That The West's Greatest Mistakes Were The 'invention' Of The External Vanishing Point And The Internal Combustion Engine.

The Editing Of Moving Pictures Is Geared Toward The Single Image. You'd Have To Edit Things In New Ways.

Photoshop Came Out Of Painting, And Now It's Going Back To Painting.

The Moment I Got A Very Big Studio, Everything Took Off.

Britain Is A Very Small Country With A Very Large Press.

Small Countries

Being Able To Draw Means Being Able To Put Things In Believable Space. People Who Don't Draw Very Well Can't Do That.

Faces Are The Most Interesting Things We See

No One Has Ever Asked To See My Degree Certificate.

People From The Village Come Up And Tease Me: 'we Hear You've Started Drawing On Your Telephone.' And I Tell Them, 'well, No, Actually, It's Just That Occasionally I Speak On My Sketch Pad,'

People Tell Me They Open My E-mails First, Because They Aren't Demands And You Don't Need To Reply. They're Simply For Pleasure.

If You See The World As Beautiful, Thrilling And Mysterious, As I Think I Do, Then You Feel Quite Alive.

I Think Cubism Has Not Fully Been Developed. It Is Treated Like A Style, Pigeonholed And That's It.

Picasso Is Still Influencing Me. Of Course, I Haven't Got That Kind Of Energy, Or Skill.

We Live In An Age Where The Artist Is Forgotten. He Is A Researcher. I See Myself That Way.

Tragedy Is A Literary Concept.

Great Claims Are Being Made For The Photograph As Truth. We Are Showing You Things, We Show You The War. I Say You Can't Actually. The Camera Can't.

It's No Good Saying I Wished I Could Go Out More, Because I Can't. But I Don't Bother About It Too Much.

There's No-one Up There In Northern Norway, Food's Terrible, But It's Very, Very Beautiful To Look At, If You've Got Eyes, And Enjoy Looking.

If You Like Music You Like Silence Actually.

Art Has To Move You And Design Does Not, Unless It's A Good Design For A Bus.

Always Live In The Ugliest House On The Street - Then You Don't Have To Look At It.

I Stay Up Nights And Fiddle With My Opera Designs. It's A Bit Obsessive. That's Why I Can't Do It All The Time.

I Never Work With Music. I Hate Background Music, Always Did. I Only Like Music In The Foreground, Meaning, Deliberately Listen To It, Actually.

Background Music

I'm Convinced That Technology And Art Go Together - And Always Have, For Centuries.

It Is Very Good Advice To Believe Only What An Artist Does, Rather Than What He Says About His Work.

Television Is Becoming A Collage - There Are So Many Channels That You Move Through Them Making A Collage Yourself. In That Sense, Everyone Sees Something A Bit Different.

In One Gallery They Actually Had A Notice Which Said No Sketching. How Obnoxious! I Said, How Do You Think These Things Got On The Walls If There Was No Sketching?

I Feel 30. [publo] Picasso Said He Always Felt 30. Well, I Do.

I Think The Enlightenment Is Leading Us Into A Dark Hole, Really.

The 'how' Has A Great Effect On What We See. To Say That 'what We See' Is More Important Than 'how We See It' Is To Think That 'how' Has Been Settled And Fixed. When You Realize This Is Not The Case, You Realize That 'how' Often Affects 'what' We See.

Dawn Is About Luminosity And So Is The Iphone... The Little Drawings Of The Dawn Are Done While I'm Still In Bed... If You're In My Kind Of Business You'd Be A Fool To Sleep Through That... Artists Can't Work Office Hours, Can They?

I Actually Think The Deafness Makes You See Clearer. If You Can't Hear, You Somehow See.

I'm Not Going To Stop Painting Just To Take Orders.

It Sometimes Takes A Foreigner To Come And See A Place And Paint It. I Remember Someone Saying They Had Never Really Noticed The Palm Trees Here Until I Painted Them.

All Painters Are Interested In Photography To A Certain Extent.

The High-definition Picture Is Still A Perspective Picture. That's The Real Problem, The Perspective Picture.

Nature, Never, Never Let's You Down, It's Not A Cliché, Nature Isn't A Cliché, Pictures Might Be, But You Can Get Tired Of Pictures.

Drawing Makes You See Things Clearer, And Clearer And Clearer Still, Until Your Eyes Ache.

I Think We Seem To Remember Things In Still Pictures. I Never Gave Up On Painting. When They Said Painting Was Dead, I Just Thought, Well, That's All About Photography, And Photography's Not That Interesting, And It's Changing Anyway.

We Need All Kinds Of Artists. We Have No Need To Destroy Drawing. We Lose So Much. This Wouldn't Happen In Music.

I Believe That The Very Process Of Looking Can Make A Thing Beautiful.

Oh, I Like Smoking, I Do. I Smoke For My Health, My Mental Health. Tobacco Gives You Little Pauses, A Rest From Life. I Don't Suppose Anyone Smoking A Pipe Would Have Road Rage, Would They?

Once My Hand Has Drawn Something My Eye Has Observed, I Know It By Heart, And I Can Draw It Again Without A Model.

Until Cubism, All Art, All Pictures, Could Be 'read' By Anybody. If This Hadn't Been So, The Christian Message Wouldn't Have Been Seen By Peasants And Its Importance Would Have Been Diminished.

Photography Sees Surfaces, It Doesn't See Space. We See Space But The Camera Doesn't.

In Fact, I'm A Bit Of A Slob, But I've Always Said My Excuse, I Have A Higher Sense Of Order, I Can See It Where Others Can't. That's My Excuse For Slobbery, I Must Admit, But I Think It's A Good One.

I Can Often Tell When Drawings Are Done From Photographs, Because You Can Tell What They Miss Out, What The Camera Misses Out: Usually Weight And Volume - There's A Flatness To Them.

But Slowly I Began To Use Cameras And Then Think About What It Was That Was Going On. It Took Me A Long Time, I Mean I Actually Played With Cameras And Photography For About 20 Years.

The Pictures On The Walls Aren't Like Movies. They Don't Move, They Don't Talk, And They'll Last Longer. They Will Last Longer.

The Moment You Can Learn To Deal With Homosexuality In Art, It's Quite An Exciting Moment, Just As In A Sense When People 'come Out' It's Quite An Exciting Moment. It Means They Become Aware Of Their Desires, And Can Deal With Them In A Remarkably Honest Way.

I Did Come From A Pretty Independent-minded Family.

Photography Hankers After The Condition Of The Neutral Observer. But There Can Be No Such Things As A Neutral Observer. For Something To Be Seen, It Must Be Looked At By Somebody, And Any True And Real Depiction Must Be An Account Of The Experience Of That Looking.

Perspective Is A Law Of Optics... The Chinese Did Not Have A System Like It. Indeed, It Is Said They Rejected The Idea Of The Vanishing Point In The Eleventh Century, Because It Meant The Viewer Was Not There, Indeed, Had No Movement, Therefore Was Not Alive.

I Think I’m Greedy, But I’m Not Greedy For Money - I Think That Can Be A Burden - I’m Greedy For An Exciting Life.

I Do Do A Lot Of Talking, Because It Saves Me Listening.

In Art, New Ways Of Seeing Mean New Ways Of Feeling; You Can't Divorce The Two, As, We Are Now Aware, You Cannot Have Time Without Space And Space Without Time.

The Cameras Are Getting Smaller, They're Getting More Versatile, And Eventually, I'm Sure You'll Have A Camera With Lots And Lots Of Things On It So You Can Alter The Picture. You Could Alter Perspective.

Because I'm Interested In Depiction, Representation, Therefore You're Interested In Photography. You Don't Ignore It.

Listening Is A Positive Act: You Have To Put Yourself Out To Do It.

Effective Listening

How Can Blair Fight A War On Terror? Terror Is Not An Ideology Or An Army; Terror Is A Technique.

I Think The Ambiguity Of Similarity And Difference Is Very Powerful. It's The Same Scene In Different Times Of Year Read Across The Grid, And, Of Course, Different Locations Reading Vertically. But You Can Get Confused And Lost In The Series. You Force The Mind, Which Is Always Comparing And Contrasting, To Stumble ... That Ambiguity Is Very Powerful. One Is Getting Lost And Refinding Oneself.

I'm Always Excited By The Unlikely, Never By Ordinary Things.

Ordinary Things

The Way We See Things Is Constantly Changing. At The Moment The Way We See Things Has Been Left A Lot To The Camera. That Shouldn't Necessarily Be.

When You Stop Doing Something, It Doesn't Mean You Are Rejecting The Previous Work. That's The Mistake; It's Not Rejecting It, It's Saying, 'i Have Exploited It Enough Now And I Wish To Take A Look At Another Corner.'

Teaching People To Draw Is Teaching People To Look

Once You Start Painting, You Could Of Course Get Lost. I Mean You Get Out Of Yourself, You Don't Know Whether You're Thinking, You Just Act Actually Sometimes.

I Was 18 When I First Visited London, I'm Very Provincial Like That, But I Must Confess The Moment I Got To America I Thought: This Is The Place. It Was More Open, With 24-hour Cities And Pubs And Restaurants That Didn't Close.

Any Artist Will Tell You He's Really Only Interested In The Stuff He's Doing Now. He Will, Always. It's True, And It Should Be Like That.

I Mean If You Draw You Like Drawing, It's Er, An Activity You Do All The Time Actually.

How Difficult It Is To Learn Not To See Like Cameras, Which Has Had Such An Effect On Us. The Camera Sees Everything At Once. We Don't.

I See The Ipad As A Wonderful New Drawing Medium, But I Am At A Loss As To How To Make It Pay.

I'm Really Only Interested In Technology That Is About Pictures. I'm Interested In Anything That Makes A Picture.

I Believe That The Problem Of How You Depict Something Is A Formal Problem. It's An Interesting One And It's A Permanent One; There's No Solution To It. There Are A Thousand And One Ways You Can Go About It. There's No Set Rule.

Laugh A Lot. It Clears The Lungs.

With Watercolour, You Can't Cover Up The Marks. There's The Story Of The Construction Of The Picture, And Then The Picture Might Tell Another Story As Well.

The Only People Who Need Degrees Are Dentists And Brain Surgeons.

An Artist Might Be Attracted To Hedonism, But Of Course An Artist Is Not A Hedonist. He's A Worker, Always.

But The Moment You Use An Ordinary Camera, You Are Not Seeing The Picture, Remember, Meaning, You Had To Remember What You've Taken. Now You Could See It Of Course, With A Digital Thing, But Remember In 1982 You Couldn't.

Anything Simple Always Interests Me.

But, I Would Always Be Thinking Of How Pictures Are Constructed And Colour, How To Use It, I Mean You're Using It For Constructing, Makes You Think About It, The Place Did As Well.

I Can Get Excitement Watching Rain On A Puddle. And Then I Paint It. Now, I Admit, There Are Not Too Many People Who Would Find That Exciting. But I Would. And I Want Life Thrilling And Rich. And It Is. I Make Sure It Is.

Tobacco Is America's Greatest Gift To The World!

What I Always Longed To Do Was To Be Able To Paint Like I Can Draw, Most Artists Would Tell You That, They Would All Like To Paint Like They Can Draw.

Style Is Something You Can Use, And You Can Be Like A Magpie, Just Taking What You Want. The Idea Of The Rigid Style Seemed To Me Then Something You Needn't Concern Yourself With, It Would Trap You.

West Yorkshire Is Quite Dramatic And Beautiful, The Crags And Things.

A Lot Of People, Given The Chance, Would Blow Up Everything, And You And Me.

Until I Saw My Drawings Replayed On The Ipad, I'd Never Seen Myself Draw. Someone Watching Me Would Be Concentrating On The Exact Moment, But I'd Always Be Thinking A Little Bit Ahead. That's Especially So In A Drawing Where You Are Limiting Yourself, A Line Drawing For Example. When You Are Doing Them You Are Very Tense, Because You Have To Reduce Everything To Such Simple Terms.

My Only Worry Is The Painting I'm Doing. Nothing Else.

I Have Never Really Done Any Teaching And Maybe I Should Have Done. I Am Not Power-mad Enough.

If You Are Not Playful You Are Not Alive.

Faces Are The Most Interesting Things We See; Other People Fascinate Me, And The Most Interesting Aspect Of Other People - The Point Where We Go Inside Them - Is The Face. It Tells All.

The Photograph Isn't Good Enough. It's Not Real Enough.

You Must Plan To Be Spontaneous.

Before He Did All Those Lovely Line Drawings, Matisse Would Make Really Detailed Charcoal Drawings And Tear Them Up. He Wouldn't Leave Them About... I Understand What He Was Doing: Discovering What's There... To Make The Line Meaningful, To Find A Linear Solution.

The Problem Is, Photographic Dyes And Printing Inks Aren't As Good As Paint, Actually.

You Would Think Death Was An Optional Extra Nowadays. Nobody Wants To Tick That Box.

On The 31st Of October 2011 Year, I Had A Mini-stroke. I Couldn't Finish My Sentences. So I Went To The Doctor. It Was A Tiny One. The Speech Came Back In A Month Or So. I Did Notice I Could Draw Even Better, I Felt. I Was Concentrating More. And I Wasn't Talking Much, But I Was Drawing. I Said, "well, I Don't Have To Talk Much."

People Criticized Me For My Photography. They Said It's Not Art.

I Want Life Thrilling And Rich. And It Is. I Make Sure It Is.

It's All One To Me: Opera, Painting, Drawing, Faxes.

I'm A Bit Claustrophobic, I Know That Now.

The Picture Itself Is A Document. How Do You Mean? We're Looking At A Document. It Gives You Clues.

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