Margaret Keane quotes

Margaret Keane was an American artist famous for her distinctive paintings of figures with oversized, expressive eyes. Her works gained immense popularity in the 1960s and sparked debates about authorship and artistic recognition. She helped redefine the boundaries of commercial and fine art through her unique and emotional style. Here are 18 of her quotes:

Gradually it dawned on me that I was painting my own inner emotions. Those children were asking: "Why are we here? What is life all about? Why is there sadness and injustice?" All those deep questions. Those children were sad because they didn't have the answers. They were searching.

Margaret Keane

Children do have big eyes. When I'm doing a portrait, the eyes are the most expressive part of the face. And they just got bigger and bigger and bigger.

Margaret Keane

He'd threatened me so many times. I thought he was so crazy he could hire a hit man to come get me anytime.

Margaret Keane

I still paint sad children, because there's sadness in the world, but they have hope, and I have hope.

Margaret Keane

And Margaret, uh, has done a lot of experimenting in her work. I think, probably, no artist has experimented the way Margaret has.

Margaret Keane

The older I get, the brighter colours I live. But in the past, they were dark, dingy, sad colours.

Margaret Keane

M, you see, is four, and D is four too, and H is eight, and four and four and eight are sixteen, which is made up of one and six, which make seven-my number.

Margaret Keane

I lost all respect for him and myself, and lived in a nightmare.

Margaret Keane

Walter was extremely charming. He could charm anybody, especially women.

Margaret Keane

A lot of art today doesn't convey much hope, and I hope mine does. I try to paint what I think the future holds and my innermost feelings about God's promise for the future.

Margaret Keane

I had just announced for the first time publicly on a radio show in San Francisco that I had done all the Keane paintings and not my ex-husband. And this, um, Bill Flang of the San Francisco Examiner thought that Walter and I should appear in Union Square and have a paint-off to decide who had done the paintings, since I was-said that I had done them. So, he arranged it, and LIFE magazine as there and all the different newspapers and t. v. stations and they, uh-some of them in the audience played "High Noon"-[laughs] And, of course, Walter didn't show up.

Margaret Keane

He can't paint eyes. He couldn't learn to paint at all.

Margaret Keane

I'd have to lock the door of the paint room. He wouldn't allow anyone in. I was like a prisoner.

Margaret Keane

For many years I had allowed my second husband to take credit for my paintings. But one day, unable to continue the deception any longer, I left him and my home in California and moved to Hawaii.

Margaret Keane

His art is in heroic bad taste. It's incredibly vulgar, it's weird, but it's still gorgeous. Bad-taste entertainment is the best entertainment. What I really love about Keane is that he is so commercial.

Margaret Keane

I think what Keane has done is just terrific. It has to be good. If it were bad, so many people wouldn't like it.

Margaret Keane