Lucian Freud
The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real.
The aura given out by a person or object is as much a part of them as their flesh.
You ask why I'm fascinated by the human figure? As a human animal, I am interested in some of my fellow animals: in their minds and bodies.
I never think about my style but just try and make the pictures look believable.
I am only interested in painting the actual person, in doing a painting of them, not in using them to some ulterior end of art. For me, to use someone doing something not native to them would be wrong.
The character of the artist doesn't enter into the nature of the art.
Full, saturated colours have an emotional significance I want to avoid.
Now that I know what I want, I don't have to hold on to it quite so much.
I want paint to work as flesh.
My work is purely autobiographical... It is about myself and my surroundings.
I paint people not because of what they are like, not exactly in spite of what they are like, but how they happen to be.
As far as I am concerned the paint is the person. I want it to work for me just as flesh does.
There is a distinction between fact and truth. Truth has an element of revelation about it. If something is true, it does more than strike one as merely being so.
The model should only serve the very private function for the painter of providing the starting point for his excitement.
The painter's obsession with his subject is all that he needs to drive him to work.
I would wish my portraits to be of the people, not like them. Not having a look of the sitter, being them.
A painter must think of everything he sees as being there entirely for his own use and pleasure.
A painter's tastes must grow out of what so obsesses him in life that he never has to ask himself what it is suitable for him to do in art.
And, since the model he faithfully copies is not going to be hung up next to the picture, since the picture is going to be there on its own, it is of no interest whether it is an accurate copy of the model.
I remember Francis Bacon would say that he felt he was giving art what he thought it previously lacked. With me, it's what Yeats called the fascination with what's difficult. I'm only trying to do what I can't do.
Painting is sometimes like those recipes where you do all manner of elaborate things to a duck, and then end up putting it on one side and only using the skin.
Since the model he so faithfully copies is not going to be hung up next to the picture... it is of no interest whether it is an accurate copy of the model.
The painter must give a completely free rein to any feeling or sensations he may have and reject nothing to which he is naturally drawn.
The paintings that really excite me have an erotic element or side to them irrespective of subject matter.
The picture is all he feels about it, all he thinks worth preserving of it, all he invests it with. If all the qualities which a painter took from the model for his picture were really taken, no person could be painted twice.
When I look at a body it gives me choice of what to put in a painting, what will suit me and what won't.
Whether it will convince or not, depends entirely on what it is in itself, what is there to be seen.
The task of the artist is to make the human being uncomfortable.Collection: Artist
Everything is autobiographical and everything is a portrait.Collection: Portraits
The painter makes real to others his innermost feelings about all that he cares for. A secret becomes known to everyone who views the picture through the intensity with which it is felt.Collection: Art
What do I ask of a painting? I ask it to astonish, disturb, seduce, convince.Collection: Painting
The aura given out by a person or object is as much a part of them as their flesh. The effect that they make in space is as bound up with them as might be their colour or smell ... Therefore the painter must be as concerned with the air surrounding his subject as with the subject itself. It is through observation and perception of atmosphere that he can register the feeling that he wishes his painting to give out.Collection: Air
I've always wanted to create drama in my pictures, which is why I paint people. It's people who have brought drama to pictures from the beginning. The simplest human gestures tell stories.Collection: Drama
I paint people, not because of what they are like, not exactly in spite of what they are like, but how they happen to be.Collection: People
I want paint to work as flesh... my portraits to be of the people, not like them. Not having a look of the sitter, being them ... As far as I am concerned the paint is the person. I want it to work for me just as flesh does.Collection: People
A moment of complete happiness never occurs in the creation of a work of art. The promise of it is felt in the act of creation but disappears towards the completion of the work. For it is then the painter realises that it is only a picture he is painting. Until then he had almost dared to hope the picture might spring to life.Collection: Art
It is the only point of getting up every morning: to paint, to make something good, to make something even better than before, not to give up, to compete, to be ambitious.Collection: Morning
I think half the point of painting a picture is that you don't know what will happen... that if painters did know what was going to happen they wouldn't bother to do it.Collection: Thinking
I could never put anything into a picture that wasn't actually there in front of me. That would be a pointless lie, a mere bit of artfulness.Collection: Lying
As far as I am concerned the paint is the person. I want it to work for me just as flesh doesCollection: Artist
The only secret I can claim to have is concentration, and that's something that can't be taught.Collection: Secret
It is through observation and perception of atmosphere that he [the artist] can register the feeling that he wishes his painting to give out.Collection: Artist
Were it not for this [dissatisfaction], the perfect painting might be painted, on the completion of which the painter could retire. It is this great insufficiency that drives him on. The process of creation becomes necessary to the painter perhaps more than it is in the picture. The process is in fact habit-forming.Collection: Perfect
I don't want any colour to be noticeable... I don't want it to operate in the modernist sense as colour, something independent... Full, saturated colours have an emotional significance I want to avoid.Collection: Independent
The paintings that really excite me have an erotic element or side to them irrespective of subject matterCollection: Erotic
The character of the artist doesn't enter into the nature of the art. Eliot said that art is the escape from personality, which I think is right. We know that Velázquez embezzled money from the Spanish court and wanted power and so on, but you can't see this in his art.Collection: Art
The model should only serve the very private function for the painter of providing the starting point for his excitementCollection: Artist
Sometimes, when I've been staring too hard, I've noticed that I could see the circumference of my own eye.Collection: Eye
The only way I could work properly was by using the absolute maximum of observation and concentration that I could possible muster.Collection: Way
I always felt that my work hadn't much to do with art; my admirations for other art had very little room to show themselves in my work because I hoped that if I concentrated enough the intensity of scrutiny alone would force life into the pictures. I ignored the fact that art, after all, derives from art. Now I realize that this is the case.Collection: Art