Howard Hodgkin Quotes & Sayings

In England, it's thought to be morally suspect to worry about what your surroundings look like. — Howard Hodgkin

A collection makes its own demands. Many artists have been collectors. I think of it rather as an illness. I felt it was using up too much energy. — Howard Hodgkin

I think that words are often extraneous to what I do. — Howard Hodgkin

I find old copies of National Gallery catalogues, which are written in the dryest possible prose, infinitely soothing. — Howard Hodgkin

A lot of people ... are afraid of pictures which have visible emotions in them. They feel calmer in front of pictures which are placid. — Howard Hodgkin

In the United States there has been a kind of a structure in the Modern art world. The New York School was nearly a coherent thing-for a minute. — Howard Hodgkin

The only way an artist can communicate with the world at large is on the level of feeling. — Howard Hodgkin

When I finish a painting, it usually looks as surprising to me as to anyone else. — Howard Hodgkin

I hate painting. — Howard Hodgkin

A painting is finished when the subject comes back, when what has caused the painting to be made comes back as an object. — Howard Hodgkin

I don't look at the work of my contemporaries very much; I tend to look at pictures by dead artists. It's much easier to get near their paintings. — Howard Hodgkin

I once was interviewed and got so exasperated that I said, 'What do you want, a shopping list?' They kept asking, 'What's in this picture?' — Howard Hodgkin

The picture surface recedes just as much in the 20th century as it did in the 15th. The techniques of making pictures have hardly changed. — Howard Hodgkin

I am isolated as an artist, not as a person. — Howard Hodgkin

I am happy for people to talk about my pictures, but I wish devoutly that I was not expected to talk about them myself. — Howard Hodgkin

I don't think you can lightly paint a picture. It's an activity I take very seriously. — Howard Hodgkin

I'm vulnerable to criticism. Any artist is, because you work alone in your studio and, until recently, critics were the only way you'd get any feedback. — Howard Hodgkin

To be a painter now is to be part of a very small, endangered species. — Howard Hodgkin

I never think that anything I do is courageous. — Howard Hodgkin

You keep on balancing and balancing and balancing until the picture wins, because then the subject's turned into the picture. — Howard Hodgkin

My friends tend to be writers. I think writers and painters are really all the same-we just sit in our rooms. — Howard Hodgkin

It takes a long time for the gleam in the eye to turn into something solid. — Howard Hodgkin

I fell through a crack for years. Historically, I am a nothing because I fit in no category. I can only be me. — Howard Hodgkin

I don't really have a historical overview of my work at all. I'm not an art historian. I don't see that there's this period and that period. — Howard Hodgkin

It is simply impossible to control a large painting with the edge in the same way that you can control a small one. — Howard Hodgkin

I look at my pictures, and I think, 'Well, how did I do that?' — Howard Hodgkin

Eventually, a collection ceases to be a personal indulgence and assumes its own identity. In fact, it becomes a thing in its own right - rather like Frankenstein's monster. — Howard Hodgkin

I'm very envious of the few artists who are any good and still do portraits. — Howard Hodgkin

Matisse was very clear about saying that you have to blow your own trumpet and explain yourself, which I think has been slightly forgotten. — Howard Hodgkin

I want my pictures to be things. I want them to be made up of marks that are physically and individually self-sufficient. — Howard Hodgkin

My pictures really finish themselves. — Howard Hodgkin

My language is what I use, and if I lost that, I wouldn't be able to say anything. — Howard Hodgkin

Collecting has been my great extravagance. It's a way of being. I collect for the same reason that I eat too much-I'm one of nature's shoppers. — Howard Hodgkin

I think words come between the spectator and the picture. — Howard Hodgkin

Passion lies between one mark and the next, and also within all of them. — Howard Hodgkin