Howard Hodgkin Quotes

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Howard Hodgkin

Profession : Artist

Birth : August 6, 1932

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 hate painting.

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.

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

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

Howard Hodgkin

I think words come between the spectator and the picture.

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 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

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

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

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

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 isolated as an artist, not as a person.

Howard Hodgkin

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

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

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

Howard Hodgkin