Amy Sillman Quotes

United States, Painter
1955

Amy Sillman is an American painter. Her artistic practice also includes drawings, cartoons, collage, iPhone video, and zines. She lives with her dog Omar in Brooklyn, where she also maintains a studio. Sillman is Co-chair, Painting at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College.

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.

Amy Sillman
- Want
- Problem
- Painting
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.

Amy Sillman

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.

Amy Sillman
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.

Amy Sillman
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.

Amy Sillman
- Work
- Trust
- Looking
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.

Amy Sillman
- Free
- Change
- Paintings
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.

Amy Sillman
- Never
- Books
- Shape
It's more this instinct to get in trouble, and then get myself out of trouble. That's what painting is for me.

Amy Sillman

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.

Amy Sillman
- Poetry
- Works
- Confident
Every painting I've ever done has like 100 paintings under it.

Amy Sillman
- Done
- Painting
- Under