Bram van Velde Quotes
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I need to go towards the illogical. This world we live in destroys us. It is always governed by the same laws. You have to create images that don’t belong to it. That are totally different from those it presents us.
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I am in the void. Nothing to hang on to.
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About Van Gogh.. a man who is on fire, a torch. His sincerity is absolute. His best painting is the grain field where he kills himself. There we find ourselves at the border of the art of painting. We cannot go further.
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The most incredible thing is that so much happens outside of the will. You can't will anything. Not even solitude is an act of will. You simply endure it. You must hold on until the very end, without weakening. You can do nothing else. But you must not believe that because you accept being nothing, you are anyone special.
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I feel myself tied to life. To the immensity and complexity of life. Each painting is an impulse towards life.
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A painting is not a battle against other people, but against oneself.
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Painting, an oeuvre, is not such a big deal, it is so unimportant. But that’s precisely what makes it interesting.
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I am well aware that a painting must inevitably be a bizarre, incomprehensible thing.
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I have to try to see where seeing is no longer possible, where visibility is gone.
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When you cross any border there is always an uneasy moment when you feel yourself automatically an enemy. Artists don’t belong to any group or country... When you are living the truth, the world no longer exists, events become unimportant. But the way of truth is not easy.. ..if you are on the side of truth, you have no power. That’s why you are always defeated. The power, all the power, is on the side of the world.. .I have been completely absorbed in my adventure. No country, no family, no ties. I didn’t exist anymore. I just had to press on.
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Life is wrecked by living.
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I don’t set out to speak a comprehensible language. But my language is authentic.
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Painting lives only through the slide towards the unknown in oneself.
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What makes a painting fascinating is its sincerity. Sincerity is such a rare thing. Most people don't dare to be sincere.
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Yes, perhaps there is some enjoyment in it his paintings too, somewhere.
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The greatest moment is when you realize that the painting you've just finished is nothing. When you manage to detach yourself from it.
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You are in an area where knowledge fails. Where you have to advance in ignorance, not even knowing where you are going.
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It was truly revealing. The strength of the intervention, the intensity of colors and the happiness of this work, has never left me.
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I'm now in a big working period, which takes me up so much that hardly anything of me remains. I have never been strong in theories and this becomes worse and worse. My work should give me satisfaction, and that is about life and death.. .Several paintings full of life and beauty arose again and give me the courage and joy to proceed on the road. There are also several paintings in which I am involved for less than half, discharges in a short time, which have existence for a while, but will not reach shaping.
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The most difficult thing is when you can’t do anything. When you just have to wait.
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Each time it’s an attempt to get there. To get to see. To get where you can see.
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Creating a painting is a matter of ensuring that all its parts achieve unity. Though it's a precarious, fragile unity.
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Through painting I try to get closer to nothingness, to the void.
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Because it's an adventure out of all proportion. You have to devote all your strength to it and it's never enough.