Wayne Thiebaud Quotes

If we don't have a sense of humor, we lack a sense of perspective

Common objects become strangely uncommon when removed from their context and ordinary ways of being seen.

If you stare at an object, as you do when you paint, there is no point at which you stop learning things from it.

I think of myself as a beginner. Sometimes that's the whole joy. If you could just do it, there'd be no point in doing it.

I haven't the slightest idea what art is, but to be a painter is something of which you have to prove.

Every paint-stroke takes you farther and farther away from your initial concept. And you have to be thankful for that.

Discipline is not a restriction but an aid to freedom.

I'm not just interested in the pictorial aspects of the landscape - see a pretty place and try to paint it - but in some way to manage it, manipulate it, or see what I can turn it into.

Art is not delivered like the morning paper; it has to be stolen from Mount Olympus.

Art means something very rare, an extraordinary achievement.

Commonplace objects are constantly changing… The pies, for example, we now see, are not going to be around forever. We are merely used to the idea that things do not change.

Painting is more important than art.

My sin as a painter is that I just want to paint anything I want to paint - and repaint.

The Gold Rush and the Pony Express made Sacramento a substantial place in terms of enterprise.

We all need critical confrontation of the fullest and most extreme kind that we can get. You can unnecessarily limit yourself by choosing your criticism.

A painter is always overjoyed when anybody pays any attention to him at all, puts him in any category, calls him anything - as long as they call him something.

Morandi suggests we are all single in this world, hoping for independent repose. But our best opportunity for a community of excellence depends upon a collection of enlightened individuals.

If I don't have anything better to do that day, I'll copy paintings, generally by people who have some relationship to the work of the moment.

Morandi gave an intimate view of his deepest thoughts. We watched him inquiring after the devilish questions of essences and substances.

An artist needs the best studio instruction, the most rigorous demands, and the toughest criticism in order to tune up his sensibilities.

Art is one of the dirtiest words in our language; it's mucked up with all kinds of meanings. There's the art of plumbing; there's the art of almost anything that you can say.

Diebenkorn was a very good critic, a very tough critic, tough on himself, tough on others. He expected the finest.

As far as I'm concerned, there is only one study and that is the way in which things relate to one another.

I'm a believer in the notion that artists who do good work believe in the ideas of extremes.