Robert Barry Quotes

I think my parents - my parents were very hands-off, quite liberal in terms of their - they really - they did encourage me, but they never really pushed me into anything, really.

I was also a good writer, by the way. My, you know, my English teacher and writing teacher loved my writing. You know, I wrote short stories and things like that. And they liked them very much.

I was never that big a rock-and-roll, rock guy. I really preferred jazz, you know, that kind of thing.

So I never had trouble getting work or working or doing - I always worked. I worked when I went to college. I worked after school.

Agnes Martin is a big influence in my work actually, when I first saw her, these fine grids.

I made films from the - when I was a little kid, my father bought me a movie camera. I just wanted to. I don't know how. You just learn, you just do it. You just do it.

I didn't make videos for a long time because I hated the look of TV sets.

And the mind actually does generate electrical currents - very weak ones and not necessarily ones that can be picked up by anyone else.

But artistically, my art I kept very separate from my political beliefs, deliberately and very, very rarely would I allow that kind of thing into it.

I certainly don't believe that people can read other people's minds.

Everybody is always satisfied with what I do.

Any artwork is part of something larger, grander and, you know, the situation that it's in is very important.

Developing your own style became something very interesting, very important to me.

Art was something that I was really interested in, probably more so than writing or anything else.

And we live in a kind of realm of language and words and so forth. So we can sort of relate to them. They don't exist without us. We create words.

If somebody gives me a chance to do something, I am going to use that space, that time, that light, that whatever it is and try and work with it.

I don't have a dream project. I don't really think in those terms, to tell you the truth.

The first place I try to go when I have free time is the museums. I'm a big museum person.

I liked the idea of the words floating in space and the space behind it moving all the time, ever changing.

I shoot a lot of video, first of all, whatever I think is interesting, just my travels; hard to say why. If something looks good, I take a picture or try to shoot it.

I have a lot of ideas for art. And it is really - I don't really have time to do them all.

I work with deadlines. It is terrible to be an artist where you are just producing work and nobody gives a damn. Nobody wants to show it.

I am an artist who works very well under pressure, in fact. I like to have deadlines.

I never ever approached a dealer. I have always been approached by dealers or curators or whatever.

I just try things and whether people like it or if I find it successful or not, I just do it.

I make my own surprises and I'm always surprised to see what I do, to see it when it's finished and the biggest challenge is once I finish it, it's not a failure. It's not a flop.

I work sometimes with dealers and sometimes people just come to me. A lot of the commissions, they just know me. They have seen something and they just approach me.

Normally my head is always filled with art ideas and things that I have to do, deadlines that I have to meet.

I never stop thinking about what I have to do. Let's put it that way. The only thing that takes me out of that is probably a film. I watch a lot of movies.

I am a very lucky artist in the sense that I have had all my life a lot of opportunities to do what I want to do.

I am very easy. I like to have my work out. I am not restrictive about any of that. It is the collectors that are possessive, not me, not me.

I think I feel much more at home in studio.

I was always - I was a movie nut. I lived in the movies, really.

I really wasn't about to get a Ph.D. in art history, you know, which you'd absolutely needed. And that was not something I wanted. And I loved art history, but not that way.

I was a filmmaker. I made movies. I made films. And I always took photos and made films, always from the beginning.