David Hockney Quotes - Page 3

It is very good advice to believe only what an artist does, rather than what he says about his work.

Photography hankers after the condition of the neutral observer. But there can be no such things as a neutral observer. For something to be seen, it must be looked at by somebody, and any true and real depiction must be an account of the experience of that looking.

Everything does come from nature. That's where you get new ideas. Just draw the landscape. I felt doing it with a bit of burnt wood was also good because I was drawing burnt wood with a piece of wood. I wanted to do black and white. After using color, I thought black and white would be good. You can have color in black and white. There is color in them, actually.

I think I am seeing more clearly now than ever.

Faces are the most interesting things we see

We live in an age where the artist is forgotten. He is a researcher. I see myself that way.

But, I would always be thinking of how pictures are constructed and colour, how to use it, I mean you're using it for constructing, makes you think about it, the place did as well.

I'm fed up with being bossed around.

People tell me they open my e-mails first, because they aren't demands and you don't need to reply. They're simply for pleasure.

No matter what the illusion created, it is a flat canvas and it has to be organized into shapes.

I do believe that painting can change the world.

I feel 30. [Publo] Picasso said he always felt 30. Well, I do.

I think we're in a very exciting time - visually, I think we are. I've not got a crystal ball. I'm not saying I know what the future is at all. In some ways I'm getting quite pessimistic about the future, but in other ways I think it might get better. We are moving into very big changes.

Water colours are wet colours in water.

There's a Chinese proverb that says it all: Painting is an old man's art.

I do do a lot of talking, because it saves me listening.

I've always been interested in space in pictures. I think my going deaf increased my spatial sense, because I can't get the direction of sound. I feel that I see space very clearly, and that's because I can't hear it. So it's a compensatory thing.

The 'how' has a great effect on what we see. To say that 'what we see' is more important than 'how we see it' is to think that 'how' has been settled and fixed. When you realize this is not the case, you realize that 'how' often affects 'what' we see.

Water in swimming pools changes its look more than in any other form its colour can be man-made and its dancing rhythms reflect not only the sky but, because of its transparency, the depth of the water as well. If the water surface is almost still and there is a strong sun, then dancing lines with the colours of the spectrum appear everywhere.

No one has ever asked to see my degree certificate.

Future art that is based on appearances won't look like the art that's gone before. Even revivals of a period are not the same.

Drawing takes time. A line has time in it

Once you start painting, you could of course get lost. I mean you get out of yourself, you don't know whether you're thinking, you just act actually sometimes.

But slowly I began to use cameras and then think about what it was that was going on. It took me a long time, I mean I actually played with cameras and photography for about 20 years.

If you like music you like silence actually.