Francis Bacon Quotes

A drawing is essentially a private work, related only to the artist's own needs; a 'finished' statue or canvas is essentially a public, presented work - related far more directly to the demands of communication.

When art works travel from place to place, what you have is the opportunity to engage with the intellect of another person who has made a thing that should have enough information in it in the way it's constructed to start thinking about why that picture got made - not why it is relevant to you.

I also paint, draw and I'm into film and photography as well, and the same thing applies to all of them. You're presenting this material to the general public and hoping that they're going to 'get' what you're doing. Some don't, some do.

Painting is a language which cannot be replaced by another language. I don't know what to say about what I paint, really.

By making pictures, you learn the many different properties of photography. I use those properties differently than, say, an advertising agency would, but we're both operating in the same reality. A face painted by Picasso occupies the same reality as a portrait by Stieglitz.

Drawing is like making an expressive gesture with the advantage of permanence.

Above and beyond drawing my creations, I try to incorporate some kind of message. I try not to end as merely a question but try to provide a conclusion within the work.

I prefer to leave the paintings to speak for themselves.

The principles of true art is not to portray, but to evoke.

What strikes me is the fact that in our society, art has become something which is only related to objects, and not to individuals, or to life.

Drawing is still basically the same as it has been since prehistoric times. It brings together man and the world. It lives through magic.

I don't think we have reached a point where art really translates into science. Perhaps for some people, having good visuals can help translate into science.

I think most people see drawing as subservient to the subject, a sort of meditation, a studying, a searching observation, in my case, for its own sake.

Illustrating is more about communicating specific ideas to a reader. Painting is more like pure science, more about the act of painting.

In art it is always as though the question is what the work of art is really about.

Every artist wants his or her work to connect with someone. I think that's why people make art.

I paint the way I spread butter on pumpernickel.

Although photography generates works that can be called art-it requires subjectivity, it can lie, it gives aesthetic pleasure-photography is not, to begin with, an art form at all. Like language, it is a medium in which works of art (among other things) are made.

I have told myself a hundred times that painting - that is, the material thing called a painting - is no more than a pretext, the bridge between the mind of the painter and the mind of the spectator.

For me, drawing is everything, because it informs everything. It even informs my poetry. It's the way I begin everything.

I keep plastering it until it comes around to what I want, in terms of all I know and think about painting now, as well as in terms of the initial observation.

For art to be art it has to cure.

When you draw something it lives and when you photograph it it dies

I could take a photo, but I'd rather paint a picture.

What you do when you paint, you take a brush full of paint, get paint on the picture, and you have faith.