Bram van Velde Quotes
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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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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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In this world that destroys me, the only thing that I can do is to live my weakness. That weakness is my only strength.
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Artists don’t live in the everyday world. That’s why people think they’re an odd bunch.
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Through painting I try to get closer to nothingness, to the void.
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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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What the eye can see won't get us very far. And what it can see is so limited, so restricted. But a gouache or an oil painting can be seen at a glance, can take in a whole world at a single glance.
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There is only the present. A painting is an instant of time that has escaped oblivion.
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The important thing is to be nothing.
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Of course painting is ridiculous. But it’s the only way I've got to get closer to life.
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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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The more you know, the less you are.
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Mondrian? His mind was too subtle. He worked in the light. I work in the darkness.. .Mondrian is the Buddha of painting. I saw him once. You wondered how a man could radiate such charisma.
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A painter is someone who can't use words. His only escape is to be a seer.
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I met Beckett at my brother’s place. That was a Big meeting, in capital letters. It was before war started, life was still normal. That time I was very lonely. We saw each other often. Before the war he had published already something, but his fame came in 1953. We never spoke about his work. He was a taciturn man. Sometimes a word escaped from his mouth. Sure, a word you would never forget. It would stick in your head... This friendship with Beckett is the most important experience in my life. He was fully alive for my way of working. What he could express in words, I did with my paintings.
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I am in a thousand pieces. Painting somehow makes me whole.
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The real horror is mass production. Painting when there is no compulsion to do so… …Pictures like that are all unpunished crimes.
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I start off on the canvas and, little by little, it imposes its own solution. But that solution is not easy to find.
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To be true, you have to take the plunge, to touch bottom. But most people want to be in control. They fear the worst. You can’t control anything. What you have to do is let yourself be taken over.. .All the paintings I have made, I was compelled to make. You must never force yourself.
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Most people's lives are governed by willpower. An artist is someone who has no will.
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When I look back to a recent painting, I can hardly bear th suffering in it.
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Painting doesn't interest me.. .What I paint is beyond painting.
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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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The most difficult thing is not to want anything.