Elaine De Kooning Quotes & Sayings

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

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

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 are like cockroaches; everything is grist for the mill. — Elaine De Kooning

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

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

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

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

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