Bram van Velde quotes - page 3

I don't know if I've got close enough [in two recent paintings he made] to what I was really trying to achieve. But at least I've tried, I've made the attempt. I've done what I could. I've gone as far as my powers permitted. (Bram van Velde)
Each painting is linked to a fundamental drama. View quote
Bram van Velde
Life is so difficult to catch. View quote
Bram van Velde
The beauty other people create is not for the artists. Artists have to live alone. View quote
Bram van Velde
The most difficult thing is not to want anything. View quote
Bram van Velde
Van Gogh... In this world of petty calculations, he was too intense. He frightened people. They cast him out. View quote
Bram van Velde
The less you think, the better it is. View quote
Bram van Velde
I met Beckett at my brother's [ w:Geert van Velde, also an abstract painter] place. That was a Big meeting [circa 1938, in Paris], 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. View quote
Bram van Velde
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. View quote
Bram van Velde
However terrible it is, the thing never involves any sadness. View quote
Bram van Velde
When I am painting, driven by lively tensions, I want to express what's going on in me. When that tension has ceased, when the life in me became visible, then something happened which had to happen. Over and over again you experience a work which is created in this way. What happened? It is hard to say, because it was not my mind that led but the inner desire that revealed its inner life. (Bram van Velde)
An artist's life is all very fine and moving. But only in retrospect. In books. View quote
Bram van Velde
I am in the void. Nothing to hang on to. View quote
Bram van Velde
The real horror is mass production. Painting when there is no compulsion to do so... ...Pictures like that are all unpunished crimes. View quote
Bram van Velde
When you are working, you are so far away and so absorbed, it's inevitable that you fall into a vacuum when you stop.... every time when I finish a painting, I always have to wait to get my strength back before I can begin another. View quote
Bram van Velde
There's always doubt. There's nothing you can get hold of. View quote
Bram van Velde
To be nothing. Just nothing. It's a frightening experience. You have to let go of everything. View quote
Bram van Velde
Everyone cheats. Only artists don't. They don't fool people and they aren't fooled. They are outside all that. Nobody can understand them. View quote
Bram van Velde
When you get to the bottom, you discover that there is no room for pride. That's what I paint. View quote
Bram van Velde
It is important to see that my paintings are ultimately stimulating. They are not at all the kind of thing that inspires despair. View quote
Bram van Velde
I have to try to see where seeing is no longer possible, where visibility is gone. (Bram van Velde)
The artist is the bearer of life. View quote
Bram van Velde
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. View quote
Bram van Velde
The important thing is to be nothing. View quote
Bram van Velde
Painting, an oeuvre, is not such a big deal, it is so unimportant. But that's precisely what makes it interesting. View quote
Bram van Velde