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.

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

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

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

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.

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

If you get an image try to destroy it.

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.

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 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 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.

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

Don't be a Pollyanna!

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.

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

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.

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

I want painting to be difficult to do.

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

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

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

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.

And I can just see that sometimes the technique is blasting powder rather than steady struggle.

Abstract means literally to draw from or separate. In this sense every artist is abstract.