Pierre Alechinsky Quotes

A very young painter is seldom alone. If he is an art student, he is in an art school with other students. He does not yet know that one day he will have to face himself as a solitary creature enclosed in a space of four walls... and that he will have to be a self-propelled being, with no one at is side.

When I paint, I liberate monsters They are the manifestations of all the doubts, searches and groping for meaning and expression which all artists experience One does not choose the content, one submits to it.

Being an artist and being a teacher are two conflicting things. When I paint, my work manifests the unexpected... In teaching it's just the opposite. I must account for every line, shape and colour and I am forced to give an explanation of the inexplicable and account for the variety of styles the students present.

Of course, when one is faced with a canvas, one is no longer alone, and the sense of solitude diminishes. This can be an agreeable passage of time. In fact, solitude then becomes a kind of companion.

Only during the action is the idea of matter influenced.

Everything that you paint may be used as evidence against you.

Too many modern painters set themselves satisfied with just a coincidence, the spot in its raw, meaningless form.

The main thing is that we are part of the reality in ourselves to perfect one's power of discovery and that leads to the discovery of our organic ourselves without fear of immersing ourselves in the earth, the sea, fire or air.

The deliberate expansion of means and methods does not automatically bring a new dimension of value.

When a painter thinks to disengage from the world outside himself and fantasies unprecedented forms he thinks he will make a painting, he finds in this expression the same effect - I would even say the same picture - that he had unconsciously acquired by his habit to experience reality intensely.

People think you can get out your canvas and paint any time you have a free moment. You can't. Commercial art and painting are entirely different. Painting takes a different mental approach. You have to get the right attitude, the right mood.

Whoever thought the immediate alternates with the immediate action is not an abstract painter.

Those who largely rely on their hands and the beautiful or shocking traces of the imagination that they leave on the canvas ...CONCRETE... one builds a picture.