Howard Hodgkin
Howard Hodgkin
Sir Gordon Howard Eliot Hodgkin CH CBE is a British painter and printmaker. His work is most often associated with abstraction...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionPainter
Date of Birth6 August 1932
kept
I once was interviewed and got so exasperated that I said, 'What do you want, a shopping list?' They kept asking, 'What's in this picture?'
activity lightly
I don't think you can lightly paint a picture. It's an activity I take very seriously.
fit
I fell through a crack for years. Historically, I am a nothing because I fit in no category. I can only be me.
blow clear slightly trumpet
Matisse was very clear about saying that you have to blow your own trumpet and explain yourself, which I think has been slightly forgotten.
looks painting surprising
When I finish a painting, it usually looks as surprising to me as to anyone else.
thinking spectators
I think words come between the spectator and the picture.
artist portraits envious
I'm very envious of the few artists who are any good and still do portraits.
technique surface century
The picture surface recedes just as much in the 20th century as it did in the 15th. The techniques of making pictures have hardly changed.
art new-york school
In the United States there has been a kind of a structure in the Modern art world. The New York School was nearly a coherent thing-for a minute.
thinking rooms painter
My friends tend to be writers. I think writers and painters are really all the same-we just sit in our rooms.
communication artist feelings
The only way an artist can communicate with the world at large is on the level of feeling.
way impossible painting
It is simply impossible to control a large painting with the edge in the same way that you can control a small one.
people emotion placid
A lot of people... are afraid of pictures which have visible emotions in them. They feel calmer in front of pictures which are placid.
finishing
My pictures really finish themselves.