Amy Sillman Quotes
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That’s the huge problem with an abstract painting. When are you done? You’re done when you don’t want to do it anymore.
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Being bad. Discomfort with your body. Bad self image. All those things turn you into an artist. The same things that keep you from being in a proper marriage.
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You can make a beautiful thing, but there's no problem in it. I like the idea of doing a thing, wrecking a thing, questioning a thing to the point where you have pushed it to the edge, and then recuperating it.
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In my work, we're not looking at an icon, we're not looking at a sign, we're not looking at a representation. We're looking at something. I do have this feeling of trust that people can read it for themselves.
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I make paintings really slowly because I change them and change them and change them and change them and change them. I don't really know how to not do that. I'm not very free in a way. Even though it looks free. But it's not.
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Every painting I've ever done has like 100 paintings under it.
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I've never read a book on shape. I've read books on gesture; I've read tons of books on color, surface, field, ground, representation, abstraction. But I've never read a book on what a shape is.
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All accidents and experiments, and discoveries, are what my work is about. The problem that I have as an artist is being way too critical.
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The works have to look like they're confident. But they also have to look sort of troubled. It's this weird thing: "Does that look confident and troubled?" It's a bit like difficult poetry.
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It's more this instinct to get in trouble, and then get myself out of trouble. That's what painting is for me.