I've also been reading about Lucian Freud today, and it turns out he was a very interesting man who said some very interesting things. Here are a few quotes from him that I can really relate to:
'All the real pleasures were solitary. I hate
being watched at work. I can't even read when others are about.'
'I could never put anything into a picture that
wasn't actually there in front of me. That would be a pointless lie, a mere bit
of artfulness.'
'I always felt that my work hadn't much to do
with art; my admirations for other art had very little room to show themselves
in my work because I hoped that if I concentrated enough the intensity of
scrutiny alone would force life into the pictures. I ignored the fact that art,
after all, derives from art. Now I realise that this is the case.'
'A moment of complete happiness never occurs in
the creation of a work of art. The promise of it is felt in the act of creation
but disappears towards the completion of the work. For it is then that the
painter realises that it is only a picture he is painting. Until then he had
almost dared to hope that the picture might spring to life. Were it not for
this, the perfect painting might be painted, on the completion of which the
painter could retire. It is this great insufficiency that drives him on. Thus
the process of creation becomes necessary to the painter perhaps more than it
is in the picture. The process in fact is habit-forming.'
'I want paint to work as flesh ... I would wish
my portraits to be of the people, not like them. Not having a look of the
sitter, being them ... As far as I am concerned the paint is the person. I want
it to work for me as flesh does.'
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