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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.

-David Hockney

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It Is Difficult To

David Hockney

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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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

Anything Simple Always Interests Me.

No One Has Ever Asked To See My Degree Certificate.

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.

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.

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

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.

You Always Need A Bit Of Low-tech.you Always Need A Pair Of Scissors, It Seems To Me. You Can Do Better Things.... The High-tech, Somehow, You Do Have To Combine It With Low-tech Things.

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!'

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.

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

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

Small Countries

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

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

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

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.

Laugh A Lot. It Clears The Lungs.

When You Are Older, You Realise That Everything Else Is Just Nothing Compared To Painting And Drawing.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

The Thing With High-tech Is That You Always End Up Using Scissors.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Tobacco Is America's Greatest Gift To The World!

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.

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.'

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

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?

If You Are Not Playful You Are Not Alive.

I Think Photography Has Made Us See The Landscape In A Very Dull Way - That's One Of Its Effects. It's Not Spatial.

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

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

It's Time To Debate Images, Especially When Someone's Going To Prison For Downloading Them.

Everything Does Come From Nature. That's Where You Get New Ideas. Just Draw The Landscape. I Felt Doing It With A Bit Of Burnt Wood Was Also Good Because I Was Drawing Burnt Wood With A Piece Of Wood. I Wanted To Do Black And White. After Using Color, I Thought Black And White Would Be Good. You Can Have Color In Black And White. There Is Color In Them, Actually.

Black And White

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.

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

Tragedy Is A Literary Concept.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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 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've Always Been Interested In Space In Pictures. I Think My Going Deaf Increased My Spatial Sense, Because I Can't Get The Direction Of Sound. I Feel That I See Space Very Clearly, And That's Because I Can't Hear It. So It's A Compensatory Thing.

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

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?

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 Was Always Interested In Photography Because It Makes A Picture.

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 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?

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

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

Faces Are The Most Interesting Things We See

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

All Painters Are Interested In Photography To A Certain Extent.

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

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

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 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.

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."

If You Like Music You Like Silence Actually.

What I Didn't Know Was I Was Deeply Attracted To The Big Space.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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 Don't Value Prizes Of Any Sort.

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

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.

It Takes A Long Time To Make It Simple.

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.

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

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'm A Bit Claustrophobic, I Don't Like Crowds, I Live By The Sea - That's What I See When I Come Out Of My House In Bridlington.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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 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

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

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

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.

Smoking Calms Me Down. It's Enjoyable. I Don't Want Politicians Deciding What Is Exciting In My Life.

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.

Paint Something Every Day.

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

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.

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.

About Shadows: Do We See Shadows? Loads Of People Don't. A Camera Will Notice A Shadow, But How Many People Have Got A Shadow In Front Of Them When They Take A Picture And Don't Notice It, And Then They See It In The Photograph Because The Photograph Will Catch The Shadow.

All Painting, No Matter What You Are Painting, Is Abstract In That It's Got To Be Organized.

There Would Be No Bohemia Without Smoking.

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?

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.

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.

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.

I've Never Been Interested In, Much In The Politics Of The Art World, It Doesn't Interest Me.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

...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.

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!

Water Colours Are Wet Colours In Water.

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

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

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.

I Did Come From A Pretty Independent-minded Family.

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.

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

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

I've Realized That I Can Do Performances.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Enjoyment Of The Landscape Is A Thrill.

As You Get Older, It Gets A Bit Harder To Keep The Spontaneity In You, But I Work At It.

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.

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

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

Ordinary Things

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

I've Always Said That The Only Thing A Photograph Is Good At Capturing Faithfully Is Another Flat Surface.

I Think I Am Seeing More Clearly Now Than Ever.

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

I Think Picasso Was, Without Doubt, The Greatest Portraitist Of The 20th Century, If Not Any Other Century.

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.

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

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.

I Thought Using Three Cameras Was A Lot Better Than One, Because You Could See Where You Were Going, Where You'd Been, And All Kinds Of Things - More Like Life. I Think Photography Has Colored Our Vision. We're Now In An Area Where It Might Break Something. I Think This Is A Time. I Feel It. I Don't Know Whether I'll Be Here Long Enough To Experience It. I've No Plans To Leave Yet.

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

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,'

You Must Plan To Be Spontaneous.

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.

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

Effective Listening

Every Good Artist I Know, I Always Think Works Hard, We're Working All The Time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Teaching People To Draw Is Teaching People To Look

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

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 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.

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.

California Is Always In My Mind.

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

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

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.

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

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.

The Lens Is A Tyranny.

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.

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

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.

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