Philip Guston Quotes

Author Image

Philip Guston

Profession : Artist

Birth : June 27, 1913

Painting and sculpture are very archaic forms. It's the only thing left in our industrial society where an individual alone can make something with not just his own hands, but brains, imagination, heart maybe.

Philip Guston

Look at any inspired painting. It's like a gong sounding; it puts you in a state of reverberation.

Philip Guston

The painting is not on a surface, but on a plane which is imagined. It moves in a mind. It is not there physically at all. It is an illusion, a piece of magic, so that what you see is not what you see.

Philip Guston

Usually I am on a work for a long stretch, until a moment arrives when the air of the arbitrary vanishes, and the paint falls into positions that feel destined.

Philip Guston

I don't know what a painting is; who knows what sets off even the desire to paint? It might be things, thoughts, a memory, sensations, which have nothing to do directly with painting itself. They can come from anything and anywhere.

Philip Guston

To paint is a possessing rather than a picturing.

Philip Guston

In my experience a painting is not made with colors and paint at all. I don't know what a painting is; who knows what sets off even the desire to paint?

Philip Guston

I am a night painter, so when I come into the studio the next morning the delirium is over.

Philip Guston