Richard Diebenkorn Quotes

In abstract painting, I worried about the limited range of possibilities that, as time went on, became increasingly important to me. I wanted to express or deal with differences that an all-over paint and canvas 'presence' neutralized.

My freedom consists in my moving about within the narrow frame that I have assigned myself for each one of my undertakings.

Maybe the given person, cup, or landscape is lost before one gets to painting. A figure exerts a continuing and unspecified influence on a painting as the canvas develops. The represented forms are loaded with psychological feeling. It can't ever just be painting.

'Abstract' literally means to draw from or separate. In this sense every artist is abstract ... a realistic or nonobjective approach makes no difference. The result is what counts.

Don't be a Pollyanna!

In a successful painting everything is integral - all the parts belong to the whole. If you remove an aspect or element you are removing its wholeness.

I would like the colors, their shapes and positions to be arrived at in response to and dictated by the condition of the total space at the time they are considered.

Mistakes can't be erased, but they move you from your present position.

Use and respond to the initial fresh qualities but consider them absolutely expendable.

One wants to see the artifice of the thing as well as the subject.

As a work progresses, its power to elicit and dictate response mounts. There seems to be an optimum moment when this power is at its greatest which just precedes the point where 'elicit' is no longer apt usage. 'Dictates' is the word for this condition and tyranny is the adversary.

And I can just see that sometimes the technique is blasting powder rather than steady struggle.

I keep plastering it until it comes around to what I want, in terms of all I know and think about painting now, as well as in terms of the initial observation.

I want a painting to be difficult to do. The more obstacles, obstructions, problems - if they don't overwhelm - the better. I would like to feel that I am involved at any stage of the painting with all its moments, not just this 'now' moment where a superficial grace is so available.

Abstract means literally to draw from or separate. In this sense every artist is abstract.

My father didn't think being an artist was a respectable or worthy goal for a man.

When I am halfway there with a painting, it can occasionally be thrilling ... But it happens very rarely; usually it's agony ... I go to great pains to mask the agony. But the struggle is there. It's the invisible enemy.