Top 38 Quotes & Sayings by Howard Hodgkin

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a British artist Howard Hodgkin.

Last updated on December 22, 2024.

Sir Gordon Howard Eliott Hodgkin was a British painter and printmaker. His work is most often associated with abstraction.

British - Artist | Born: August 6, 1932

Source: Wikipedia

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.

Howard Hodgkin

I am isolated as an artist, not as a person.

Howard Hodgkin

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?'

Howard Hodgkin

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

Howard Hodgkin

I think words come between the spectator and the picture.

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.

Howard Hodgkin

I don't think you can lightly paint a picture. It's an activity I take very seriously.

Howard Hodgkin

I find old copies of National Gallery catalogues, which are written in the dryest possible prose, infinitely soothing.

Howard Hodgkin

I look at my pictures, and I think, 'Well, how did I do that?'

Howard Hodgkin

In England, it's thought to be morally suspect to worry about what your surroundings look like.

Howard Hodgkin

I'm very envious of the few artists who are any good and still do portraits.

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.

Howard Hodgkin

I fell through a crack for years. Historically, I am a nothing because I fit in no category. I can only be me.

Howard Hodgkin

My friends tend to be writers. I think writers and painters are really all the same-we just sit in our rooms.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

Howard Hodgkin

I hate painting.

Howard Hodgkin

You keep on balancing and balancing and balancing until the picture wins, because then the subject's turned into the picture.

Howard Hodgkin

I think that words are often extraneous to what I do.

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

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.

Howard Hodgkin

My language is what I use, and if I lost that, I wouldn't be able to say anything.

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.

Howard Hodgkin

A lot of people... are afraid of pictures which have visible emotions in them. They feel calmer in front of pictures which are placid.

Howard Hodgkin

I look at my pictures, and I think, 'Well, how did I do that?

Howard Hodgkin

My language is what I use, and if I lost that, I wouldnt be able to say anything.

Howard Hodgkin

Passion lies between one mark and the next, and also within all of them.

Howard Hodgkin

It is simply impossible to control a large painting with the edge in the same way that you can control a small one.

Howard Hodgkin

I never think that anything I do is courageous.

Howard Hodgkin

It takes a long time for the gleam in the eye to turn into something solid.

Howard Hodgkin

The only way an artist can communicate with the world at large is on the level of feeling.

Howard Hodgkin

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

Howard Hodgkin

My pictures really finish themselves.

Howard Hodgkin

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

Howard Hodgkin

Eventually, a collection ceases to be a personal indulgence and assumes its own identity. In fact, it becomes a thing in its own right - rather like Frankenstein's monster.

Howard Hodgkin

Top 38 Quotes & Sayings by Howard Hodgkin

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