Lucian Freud Quotes & Sayings

When I look at a body it gives me choice of what to put in a painting, what will suit me and what won't. — Lucian Freud

I want paint to work as flesh. — Lucian Freud

Now that I know what I want, I don't have to hold on to it quite so much. — Lucian Freud

The aura given out by a person or object is as much a part of them as their flesh. — Lucian Freud

Painting is sometimes like those recipes where you do all manner of elaborate things to a duck, and then end up putting it on one side and only using the skin. — Lucian Freud

I've always wanted to create drama in my pictures, which is why I paint people. It's people who have brought drama to pictures from the beginning. The simplest human gestures tell stories. — Lucian Freud

And, since the model he faithfully copies is not going to be hung up next to the picture, since the picture is going to be there on its own, it is of no interest whether it is an accurate copy of the model. — Lucian Freud

I think half the point of painting a picture is that you don't know what will happen ... that if painters did know what was going to happen they wouldn't bother to do it. — Lucian Freud

The paintings that really excite me have an erotic element or side to them irrespective of subject matter. — Lucian Freud

The only way I could work properly was by using the absolute maximum of observation and concentration that I could possible muster. — Lucian Freud

I always felt that my work hadn't much to do with art; my admirations for other art had very little room to show themselves in my work because I hoped that if I concentrated enough the intensity of scrutiny alone would force life into the pictures. I ignored the fact that art, after all, derives from art. Now I realize that this is the case. — Lucian Freud

My work is purely autobiographical ... It is about myself and my surroundings. — Lucian Freud

The process of creation becomes necessary to the painter perhaps more than is the picture. The process in fact is habit-forming — Lucian Freud

A painter must think of everything he sees as being there entirely for his own use and pleasure. — Lucian Freud

I could never put anything into a picture that wasn't actually there in front of me. That would be a pointless lie, a mere bit of artfulness. — Lucian Freud

The painter's obsession with his subject is all that he needs to drive him to work. — Lucian Freud

The painter must give a completely free rein to any feeling or sensations he may have and reject nothing to which he is naturally drawn. — Lucian Freud

The painter makes real to others his innermost feelings about all that he cares for. A secret becomes known to everyone who views the picture through the intensity with which it is felt. — Lucian Freud

I am only interested in painting the actual person, in doing a painting of them, not in using them to some ulterior end of art. For me, to use someone doing something not native to them would be wrong. — Lucian Freud

I remember Francis Bacon would say that he felt he was giving art what he thought it previously lacked. With me, it's what Yeats called the fascination with what's difficult. I'm only trying to do what I can't do. — Lucian Freud

I have a timetable, but no routine. — Lucian Freud

A moment of complete happiness never occurs in the creation of a work of art. The promise of it is felt in the act of creation but disappears towards the completion of the work. For it is then the painter realises that it is only a picture he is painting. Until then he had almost dared to hope the picture might spring to life. — Lucian Freud

The paintings live because their creator has been passionately attentive to their theme, and his attention has left something for us to look at. It seems a sort of miracle. — Lucian Freud

Were it not for this [dissatisfaction], the perfect painting might be painted, on the completion of which the painter could retire. It is this great insufficiency that drives him on. The process of creation becomes necessary to the painter perhaps more than it is in the picture. The process is in fact habit-forming. — Lucian Freud

Whether it will convince or not, depends entirely on what it is in itself, what is there to be seen. — Lucian Freud

I would wish my portraits to be of the people, not like them. Not having a look of the sitter, being them. — Lucian Freud

I paint people not because of what they are like, not exactly in spite of what they are like, but how they happen to be. — Lucian Freud

The character of the artist doesn't enter into the nature of the art. — Lucian Freud

I never think about my style but just try and make the pictures look believable. — Lucian Freud

The painting is always done very much with [the model's] co-operation. The problem with painting a nude, of course, is that it deepens the transaction. You can scrap a painting of someone's face and it imperils the sitter's self-esteem less than scrapping a painting of the whole naked body. — Lucian Freud

The model should only serve the very private function for the painter of providing the starting point for his excitement. — Lucian Freud

The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real. — Lucian Freud

You ask why I'm fascinated by the human figure? As a human animal, I am interested in some of my fellow animals: in their minds and bodies. — Lucian Freud

A painter's tastes must grow out of what so obsesses him in life that he never has to ask himself what it is suitable for him to do in art. — Lucian Freud

I work from the people that interest me, and that I care about, in rooms that I live in and know. I use the people to invent my pictures, and I can work more freely when they are there. — Lucian Freud

The task of the artist is to make the human being uncomfortable. — Lucian Freud

Full, saturated colours have an emotional significance I want to avoid. — Lucian Freud

It is through observation and perception of atmosphere that he [the artist] can register the feeling that he wishes his painting to give out. — Lucian Freud

Losing as much money as I can get hold of is an instant solution to my economic problems. — Lucian Freud

The picture is all he feels about it, all he thinks worth preserving of it, all he invests it with. If all the qualities which a painter took from the model for his picture were really taken, no person could be painted twice. — Lucian Freud

Sometimes, when I've been staring too hard, I've noticed that I could see the circumference of my own eye. — Lucian Freud

It is the only point of getting up every morning: to paint, to make something good, to make something even better than before, not to give up, to compete, to be ambitious. — Lucian Freud

There is a distinction between fact and truth. Truth has an element of revelation about it. If something is true, it does more than strike one as merely being so. — Lucian Freud

What do I ask of a painting? I ask it to astonish, disturb, seduce, convince. — Lucian Freud

As far as I am concerned the paint is the person. I want it to work for me just as flesh does. — Lucian Freud

I have a hatred of habit and routine. And what dogs love is just that. They like regular everything, and I don't have regular anything. I have a timetable, but no routine. — Lucian Freud

The only secret I can claim to have is concentration, and that's something that can't be taught. — Lucian Freud

I use the gallery as if it were a doctor. I come for ideas and help - to look at situations within painting, rather than paintings. — Lucian Freud