if only we could pull out our brain and use only our eyes
To draw you must close your eyes and sing.
God created the giraffe, the cat, the elephant …
He has no real style, he just keeps trying things.
Everything is a miracle.
It is a miracle that one does not dissolve in one’s bath like a lump of sugar.
I used to draw like Raphael, but it has taken me a whole lifetime to learn to draw like a child.
Le Picador ii 1961
Lithograph
I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.
I do not seek. I find.
Inspiration exists, but it has to find us working.
Everything you can imagine is real.
Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction.
The chief enemy of creativity is “good” sense.
The artist is a receptacle for the emotions that come from all over the place:
from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider’s web.
We all know that Art is not truth.
Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth, at least the truth that is given to us to understand.
Why do two colors, put one next to the other, sing?
Can one really explain this? No. Just as one can never learn how to paint.
All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once one grows up.
It takes a long time to become young.
Youth has no age.
You mustn’t always believe what I say.
Questions tempt you to tell lies, particularly when there is no answer.
For me, creation first starts by contemplation, and I need long, idle hours of meditation.
It is then that I work most. I look at flies, at flowers, at leaves and trees around me.
I let my mind drift at ease, just like a boat in the current.
Sooner or later, it is caught by something.
It gets precise. It takes shape … my next painting motif is decided.
– Pablo Picasso
A Life of Picasso
– John Richardson
the awakened eye 