Walk'nDraw and de Kooning's Words

This morning was sunny and cold. I managed one drawing. Fortunately, tomorrow promises to be as nice, and I will be better prepared. I walked in the opposite direction, and saw compositions that I have missed until now, only because the light was so cooperative. The above drawing is made with three different pencils.

But I did make a compilation of de Kooning quotes:

In da beginning was da void.

You have to change to stay the same.

[Water,] it reflects while you are reflecting.

[Mondrian] became the greatest lay-out man in the universe.

There was no doubt he [Arshile Gorky] was the boss. It was his personality and I had to put up with it. He was the general. Like we would be walking and all of a sudden he would cross the street. So I would tell him, ‘I wish you wouldn’t do that Arshile, because you do that the right way and skip the car—but I run into it.’

Art is the thing you cannot make.

Everything is already in art, like a big bowl of soup. And you just stick your hand in, and find something for you. But it was already there, like a stew.

The trouble with a painting, you know, is that you can’t get the legs under it. No matter what you do those legs are always sticking out of the plane.

…when I was eighteen, I could paint just as good as now. Now I have to spend the rest of my life to know what I was doing.

Edges are what we see. It’s between the edges that it’s difficult.

Even abstract shapes must have a likeness.

If you are an artist the problem is to make a picture work whether you are happy or not.

If I will ever be a great painter is something for other people to find out. I am content to just be a painter.

I think that if an artist can always title his pictures, that means he is not always very clear.

The universe gives me the creeps.

Every time I paint a picture I’m throwing the dice. I can’t ‘save’ anything. That would be doctoring it. It’s a new game. It’s not like playing poker where you can trade a card for another one; it’s playing dice.

An artist is like a homespun philosopher.

Art should not have to be a certain way…Style is a fraud…To desire to make a style is an apology for one’s anxiety.

Flesh was the reason why oil painting was invented.

The landscape is in the woman and there is Woman in the Landscapes.

Well, you know a car could be on the street sitting on its four wheels, but put the car with the wheels up in the air and something strange happens, the same car, just change the position of it.

[Cuba] was like being in New Jersey, except for the palm trees.

I don’t want to be new anymore.

Actually I’ve fallen in love with nature. I don’t know the names of trees but I see things in nature very well. I’ve got a good eye for them, and they look back at me.

Goethe said that when you’re sixty you start all over again, and that’s what I’m doing.

…look at the way Hopper painted the people to look like furniture and the furniture to look like the people.

Y’know the real world, this so-called real world, is just something you put up with, like everybody else.

Then there is a time in life when you just take a walk: And you walk in your own landscape.

I am becoming freer. I think you can do miracles with what you have if you accept it.