Elaine de Kooning Quotes

For one thing, I want gesture-any kind of gesture, all kinds of gesture-gentle or brutal, joyous or tragic; the gesture of space soaring, sinking, streaming, whirling; the gestures of light flowing or spurting through color. I see everything as possessing or possessed by gesture. I've often thought of my paintings as having an axis around which everything revolves.

Elaine de Kooning

• Painting
• Tragic
• Gesture

A painting to me is primarily a verb, not a noun, an event first and only secondarily an image.

Elaine de Kooning

• Painting
• Image
• Verb

Women can also be creative in total isolation. I know excellent women artists who do original work without any response to speak of. Maybe they are used to lack of feedback. Maybe they are tougher.

Elaine de Kooning

• Work
• Artists
• Response

Artists are like cockroaches; everything is grist for the mill.

Elaine de Kooning

• Artists
• Cockroaches

Every artist returns to things. The drawings that you make as a child or as an adolescent and the ideas that you have as a young beginning artist, no doubt they crop up again and again.

Elaine de Kooning

• Ideas
• Artist
• Child

I made my first trip west of the Hudson and it was a revelation. The naked musculature of the Rockies was overpowering and my painting responded.

Elaine de Kooning

• Painting
• Revelation
• Trip

Inspiration is indispensable to my work, but it is hard to come by. It is there or it is not; it is a gift of the gods.

Elaine de Kooning

• Work
• Inspiration
• Gift

Art has been hijacked by nonartists. It's been taken over by bookkeeping. The whole thing is so corrupt. But I suppose that's okay. For artists, everything is grist for the mill. Artists are like cockroaches; we can't be stamped out.

Elaine de Kooning

• Artists
• Corrupt
• Cockroaches

I'm more interested in character. Character comes out of the work. Style is applied or imposed on it.

Elaine de Kooning

• Work
• Character
• Style