Quotes by '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...

looks painting surprising

When I finish a painting, it usually looks as surprising to me as to anyone else.

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.

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.

painting endangered-species painter

To be a painter now is to be part of a very small, endangered species.

thinking paint activity

I dont think you can lightly paint a picture. Its an activity I take very seriously.

back-when painting made

A painting is finished when the subject comes back, when what has caused the painting to be made comes back as an object.

artist looks painting

I don't look at the work of my contemporaries very much; I tend to look at pictures by dead artists. It's much easier to get near their paintings.

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.

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.