Richard Diebenkorn Quotes

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.

Mistakes can't be erased, but they move you from your present position.

Abstract means literally to draw from or separate. In this sense every artist is abstract for he must create his own work from his visual impressions. A realistic or non-objective approach makes no difference. The result is what counts.

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.

I can never accomplish what I want - only what I would have wanted had I thought of it beforehand.

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.

All paintings start out of a mood, out of a relationship with things or people, out of a complete visual impression

Attempt what is not certain. Certainty may or may not come later. It may then be a valuable delusion.

If you get an image try to destroy it.

Do search, but in order to find other than what is searched for.

I came to mistrust my desire to explode the picture and supercharge it in some way… what is more important is a feeling of strength in reserve – tension beneath calm.

I would like the colors, their shapes and positions to be arrived at in response to and dictated by the condition of the total space at the time they are considered.

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.

My freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful, the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles.

I have found in my still-life work that I seem to be able to tell what objects are important to me by what tends to stay in the painting as it develops.

My freedom consists in my moving about within the narrow frame that I have assigned myself for each one of my undertakings.

Don't be a Pollyanna!

I want painting to be difficult to do.

Use and respond to the initial fresh qualities but consider them absolutely expendable.

One wants to see the artifice of the thing as well as the subject.

Somehow don't be bored, but if you must, use it in action. Use its destructive potential.

My father didn't think being an artist was a respectable or worthy goal for a man. He hoped I would see my way to more serious work and would find myself turning towards medicine, law, or business.

Don't 'discover' a subject of any kind.

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.

I trust the symbol that is arrived at in the making of the painting. Meaningful symbols aren't invented as such, they are made or discovered as symbol later.