David Hockney Quotes

I believe that the very process of looking can make a thing beautiful.

If you see the world as beautiful, thrilling and mysterious, as I think I do, then you feel quite alive.

It takes a long time to make it simple.

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.

If you are not playful you are not alive.

If we are to change our world view, images have to change.

The camera can't see space. It sees surfaces. People see space, which is much more interesting.

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.

I draw flowers every day and send them to my friends so they get fresh blooms every morning.

You must plan to be spontaneous.

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.

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.

Teaching people to draw is teaching people to look

I'm interested in all kinds of pictures, however they are made, with cameras, with paint brushes, with computers, with anything.

Of course you can still paint landscape - it's not been worn out.

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 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.

I'm always excited by the unlikely, never by ordinary things.

Enjoyment of the landscape is a thrill.

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.

The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you're an artist.

Listening is a positive act: you have to put yourself out to do it.

The urge to draw must be quite deep within us, because children love to do it.

There is nothing wrong with photography, if you don't mind the perspective of a paralysed Cyclops.

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.