77 Quotes by 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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.