Tali Lennox Quotes

I start a picture and I finish it.

It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess. Otherwise there is pure harmony, an easy give and take, and the painting comes out well.

I try to physically and mentally immerse myself in whatever it is I am doing. That is good for me as an artist.

I love audio books, and when I paint I'm always listening to a book. I find that my imagination really takes flight in the painting process when I'm listening to audio books.

A lot of painters listen to music, I think, while they paint. But I hate to do that. It's a horror. I can't really listen to the music. I'm not really concentrating on it, and I'm not really concentrating on the painting.

My painting does not come from the easel.

On the floor I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more part of the painting, since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting.

When I'm making a film, I'm obsessive about what I do, and I get totally into it. That's all I'm eating, breathing, living at that moment.

The time that I devote to painting is not a lot of time, but I do it 100 percent while I am working, and then there's nothing else that counts.

I stick the collages on the wall and, if I still like them after a month or two, I make a painting.

There are days when I'll write for 15 minutes and have to give up and move around, and I'll write another paragraph and give up again. On other days I get intensely - focused on the process, sit down at 8 A.M. and won't get up until 8 P.M.

I do some kind of work, whether writing or painting or recording, on a daily basis. And it's so essential that when I'm involved in the actual process, my so-called 'real life' becomes almost incidental, which becomes worrying.

The funny thing is, whenever I'm working on something, I kind of forget there's a lot of people watching. It makes it easier to be in the moment and to tell a story as well as possible.

I can lock myself for months in the editing suite with no noise or distractions. It's fascinating to see the film taking shape.

Painting on the ground was a cool challenge because you can't just stand back and see what you're doing.

I get into a zone where I'm really in my own world when I make music.

If you're concentrating so damn hard on a piece of mathematics or a musical - a piece of music or a piece of art, the restraint that holds the rest of - the rest of the world back off and vanishes in the rest of your life.

I remember so well my father's complete concentration when he went to the studio. Everything he did, every movement he made, he did with complete concentration. Then, after he had finished work, he would go to the beach or whatever, and then he would enjoy play and forget about his work.

When I make a movie, I completely dive into it and I can't really take anything in at all, at that time.

Making a painting is like playing the saxophone. You hit the note and it comes out.

Painting is something that takes place among the colors.

Discipline is the servant of inspiration.

In the end, the gesture of painting becomes almost meditative, like a ritual.

Painting is damned difficult - you always think you've got it, but you haven't.

I paint daily with watercolors on 5-by-7-inch pads that are small enough for me to take them everywhere.