In a successful painting everything is integral - all the parts belong to the whole. If you remove an aspect or element you are removing its wholeness.
Richard DiebenkornRead
When I am halfway there with a painting, it can occasionally be thrilling... But it happens very rarely; usually it's agony... I go to great pains to mask the agony. But the struggle is there. It's the invisible enemy.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The process of creating art is often filled with both excitement and struggle, where the artist grapples with hidden challenges.
In this quote, Richard Diebenkorn reflects on his experience as an artist, highlighting the dual nature of the creative process. While there are moments of joy and thrill in the halfway completion of a painting, these moments are rare and often overshadowed by the more prevalent feelings of agony and struggle. Diebenkorn emphasizes that this internal conflict is like an invisible enemy that artists constantly face, suggesting that the creative journey is not just about the final product but also about the emotional and psychological hurdles encountered along the way.
Themes
ArtStruggleCreativityPainProcess
In practice
Example use cases
A shared post on social media expressing the challenges of being an artist.
More from Richard Diebenkorn
All quotes →I want a painting to be difficult to do. The more obstacles, obstructions, problems - if they don't overwhelm - the better. I would like to feel that I am involved at any stage of the painting with all its moments, not just this 'now' moment where a superficial grace is so available.
Richard DiebenkornRead
All paintings start out of a mood, out of a relationship with things or people, out of a complete visual impression. To call this expression abstract seems to me often to confuse the issue. Abstract means literally to draw from or separate. In this sense every artist is abstract . . . a realistic or non-objective approach makes no difference. The result is what counts.
Richard DiebenkornRead
I don't go into the studio with the idea of 'saying' something. What I do is face the blank canvas and put a few arbitrary marks on it that start me on some sort of dialogue.
Richard DiebenkornRead
Similar quotes
Every good writer I know needs to go into some deep, quiet place to do work that is fully imagined. And what the Internet brings is lots of vulgar data. It is the antithesis of the imagination. It leaves nothing to the imagination.
Jonathan FranzenRead
Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don't believe that only art matters, I do believe in Art for Art's sake.
E. M. ForsterRead
Do you know, Considering the market, there are more Poems produced than any other thing? No wonder poets sometimes have to seem So much more businesslike than businessmen. Their wares are so much harder to get rid of.
Robert FrostRead
That is one thing I am sure of amid my many uncertainties regarding the literary vocation: deep inside, a writer feels that writing is the best thing that ever happened to him, or could ever happen to him, because as far as he is concerned, writing is the best possible way of life, never mind the social, political, or financial rewards of what he might achieve through it.
Mario Vargas LlosaRead
Music is for people. The word 'pop' is simply short for popular. It means that people like it. I'm just a normal jerk who happens to make music. As long as my brain and fingers work, I'm cool.
Eddie Van HalenRead
No one can write a best seller by trying to. He must write with complete sincerity; the clichés that make you laugh, the hackneyed characters, the well-worn situations, the commonplace story that excites your derision, seem neither hackneyed, well worn nor commonplace to him. ... The conclusion is obvious: you cannot write anything that will convince unless you are yourself convinced. The best seller sells because he writes with his heart's blood.
W. Somerset MaughamRead