Howard Hodgkin quotes

When I finish a painting, it usually looks as surprising to me as to anyone else. (Howard Hodgkin)
You keep on balancing and balancing and balancing until the picture wins, because then the subject's turned into the picture. View quote
Howard Hodgkin
I am happy for people to talk about my pictures, but I wish devoutly that I was not expected to talk about them myself. View quote
Howard Hodgkin
It takes a long time for the gleam in the eye to turn into something solid. View quote
Howard Hodgkin
I never think that anything I do is courageous. View quote
Howard Hodgkin
Collecting has been my great extravagance. It's a way of being. I collect for the same reason that I eat too much-I'm one of nature's shoppers. View quote
Howard Hodgkin
I want my pictures to be things. I want them to be made up of marks that are physically and individually self-sufficient. View quote
Howard Hodgkin
I am isolated as an artist, not as a person. View quote
Howard Hodgkin
I think words come between the spectator and the picture. View quote
Howard Hodgkin
A painting is finished when the subject comes back, when what has caused the painting to be made comes back as an object. View quote
Howard Hodgkin
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. (Howard Hodgkin)
I find old copies of National Gallery catalogues, which are written in the dryest possible prose, infinitely soothing. View quote
Howard Hodgkin
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. View quote
Howard Hodgkin
My friends tend to be writers. I think writers and painters are really all the same-we just sit in our rooms. View quote
Howard Hodgkin
A collection makes its own demands. Many artists have been collectors. I think of it rather as an illness. I felt it was using up too much energy. View quote
Howard Hodgkin
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. View quote
Howard Hodgkin
In England, it's thought to be morally suspect to worry about what your surroundings look like. View quote
Howard Hodgkin
I think that words are often extraneous to what I do. View quote
Howard Hodgkin
My language is what I use, and if I lost that, I wouldn't be able to say anything. View quote
Howard Hodgkin
I don't really have a historical overview of my work at all. I'm not an art historian. I don't see that there's this period and that period. View quote
Howard Hodgkin
Matisse was very clear about saying that you have to blow your own trumpet and explain yourself, which I think has been slightly forgotten. (Howard Hodgkin)
I'm very envious of the few artists who are any good and still do portraits. View quote
Howard Hodgkin
I don't think you can lightly paint a picture. It's an activity I take very seriously. View quote
Howard Hodgkin
I'm vulnerable to criticism. Any artist is, because you work alone in your studio and, until recently, critics were the only way you'd get any feedback. View quote
Howard Hodgkin
I look at my pictures, and I think, 'Well, how did I do that?' View quote
Howard Hodgkin