Georgia O'Keeffe
I got half-a-dozen paintings from that shattered plate.Collection: Creativity
He wanted head and hands and arms on a pillow - in many different positions. I was asked to move my hands in many different ways - also my head - and I had to turn this way and that. There were nudes that might have been of several different people - sitting - standing - even standing upon the radiator against the window - that was difficult - radiators don't intend you to stand on top of them. (On being photographed by Alfred Stieglitz)Collection: Moving
His letters ... have been like fine cold water when you are terribly thirsty.Collection: Water
I never knew [Alfred Stieglitz] to make a trip anywhere to photograph. His eye was in him, and he used it on anything that was nearby. Maybe that way he was always photographing himself.Collection: Eye
The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can clarify in paint.Collection: Art
I made you take time to look at what I saw and when you took time to really notice my flower, you hung all your associations with flowers on my flower and you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see—and I don't.Collection: Flower
I am trying with all my skill to do a painting that is all woman, as well as all of me.Collection: Skills
I see no reason for painting anything that can be put into any other form as well.Collection: Painting
Objective painting is not good painting unless it is good in the abstract sense.Collection: Painting
Sometimes I start in a very realistic fashion, and as I go on from one painting to another of the same kind, it becomes simplified until it can be nothing but abstraction.Collection: Fashion
Did you ever have something to say and feel as if the whole side of the wall wouldn't be big enough to say it on, and then sit down on the floor and try to get it onto a sheet of charcoal paper?Collection: Wall
I am not an exponent of expressionism. I don't know exactly what that means, but I don't like the sound of it. I dislike cults and isms. I want to paint in terms of my own thinking and feeling.Collection: Mean
Slits in nothingness are not very easy to paint.Collection: Easy
On the way I stood a moment looking out across the marshes with tall cattails, a patch of water, more marsh, then the woods with a few birch trees shining white at the edge on beyond. In the darkness it all looked just like I felt. Wet and swampy and gloomy, very gloomy. In the morning I painted it. My memory of it is that it was probably my best painting that summer.Collection: Summer
We feared the heartlessness of human beings, all of whom are born blind, few of whom ever learn to see.Collection: Heart
Bement was a very good teacher but he was a very poor painter. I guess he wasn't a painter at all. He had no courage and I believe that to create one's own world in any of the arts takes courage.Collection: Teacher
I have painted portraits that to me are almost photographic. I remember hesitating to show the paintings, they looked so real to me. But they have passed into the world as abstractions - no one seeing what they are.Collection: Real
A flower touches everyone's heart.Collection: Nature
Before I put brush to canvas, I question, 'Is this mine? ...Is it influenced by some idea which I have acquired from some man? ...I am trying with all my skill to do a painting that is all of women, as well as all of me.Collection: Men
When people read erotic symbols into my painting, they're really thinking about their own affairs.Collection: Thinking
To make your unknown known - that's the important thing.Collection: Important
I long ago came to the conclusion that even if I could put down accurately the thing I saw and enjoyed, it would not give the observer the kind of feeling it gave me. I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at-not copy it.Collection: Art
I decided to accept as true my own thinking.Collection: Thinking
So I said to myself-I'll paint what I see-what the flower is to me but I'll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking the time to look at it-I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers.Collection: Art
Happiness goes like the wind, but what is interesting stays.Collection: Happiness
The painting is like a thread that runs through all the reasons for all the other things that make one's life.Collection: Running
I wish people were all trees and I think I could enjoy them then.Collection: Thinking
The meaning of a word - to me - is not as exact as the meaning of a color. Colors and shapes make a more definite statement than words.Collection: Color
Dearest - my body is simply crazy with wanting you - If you don't come tomorrow - I don't see how I can wait for you - I wonder if your body wants mine the way mine wants yours - the kisses - the hotness - the wetness - all melting together - the being held so tight that it hurts - the strangle and the struggle.Collection: Hurt
I like an empty wall because I can imagine what I like on it.Collection: Wall
Since I cannot sing, I paint.Collection: Artist
God told me if I painted that mountain enough, I could have it.Collection: Artist
My center does not come from my mind - it feels in me like a plot of warm moist well tilled earth with the sun shining hot on it... It seems I would rather feel starkly empty than let any thing be planted that cannot be tended to the fullest possibility of its growth.Collection: Shining
Making your unknown known is the important thing - and keeping the unknown always beyond you - catching - crystalizing your simpler clearer vision of life - only to see it turn stale compared to what you vaguely feel ahead - that you must always keep working to grasp.Collection: Vision
It always seems to me that so few people live - they just seem to exist and I don't see any reason why we shouldn't live always - til we die physically.Collection: People
I want real things ... music that makes holes in the sky.Collection: Real
Color is one of the great things in the world that makes life worth living to me and as I have come to think of painting it is my efforts to create an equivalent with paint color for the world, life as I see it.Collection: Thinking
The morning is the best time, there are no people around. My pleasant disposition likes the world with nobody in it.Collection: Morning
A flower is relatively small... Still in a way-nobody sees a flower-so I said to myself-I'll paint it big.Collection: Flower
My first memory is of the brightness of light — light all around.Collection: Quilts
Art is a wicked thing. It is what we are.Collection: Art
I do not like the idea of happiness - it is too momentary - I would say that I was always busy and interested in something - interest has more meaning to me than the idea of happiness.Collection: Happiness
When I think of death, I only regret that I will not be able to see this beautiful country anymore unless the Indians are right and my spirit will walk here after I'm gone.Collection: Beautiful
I get out my work and have a show for myself before I have it publicly. I make up my own mind about it-how good or bad or indifferent it is. After that, the critics can write what they please. I have already settled it for myself so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free.Collection: Writing
I'm frightened all the time. But I never let it stop me. Never!Collection: Frightened
I can't live where I want to, I can't go where I want to go, I can't do what I want to, I can't even say what I want to. I decided I was a very stupid fool not to at least paint as I wanted to.Collection: Stupid
One day a hummingbird flew in-- It fluttered against the window til I got it down where I could reach it with an open umbrella-- --When I had it in my hand it was so small I couldn't believe I had it--but I could feel the intense life--so intense and so tiny-- ...You were like the humming bird to me... And I am rather inclined to feel that you and I know the best part of one another without spending much time together-- --It is not that I fear the knowing-- It is that I am at this moment willing to let you be what you are to me--it is beautiful and pure and very intensely alive.Collection: Beautiful
One works because I suppose it is the most interesting thing one knows to do. The days one works are the best days. On the other days one is hurrying through the other things one imagines one has to do to keep one's life going.Collection: Interesting