26 Quotes by Paula Rego

On the contrary! It's an affectionate picture, a picture of a man of the theatre. It's not at all shocking. He just looks handsome. He's thinking, he's introspective.

He was brilliantly still, and I've never known anyone so punctual.

It's to look after him. The little face of the lamb looks quite old; it's quite a worried and touching face. The things I couldn't get into David's face I put into the sheep's face. It's complementary; it goes well with him and looks after him. David has the good-looking face of a healthy young man. The sheep complemented it.

It just didn't look like him; it looked like some movie star.

Sketches always have more vitality than paintings because you're finding things out through doing them.

In collage you're doing it in stages so you're not actually doing it right there. You first of all draw it on the paper, then you cut it up, then you paste it down, then you change it, then you shove it about, then you may paint bits of it over, so actually you're not making the picture there and then, you're making it through a process, so it's not so spontaneous.

To be a dog woman is not necessarily to be downtrodden; that has very little to do with it. In these pictures every woman's a dog woman, not downtrodden, but powerful. To be bestial is good. It's physical. Eating, snarling, all activities to do with sensation are positive. To picture a woman as a dog is utterly believable.

Another thing that escapes me is HOW to give substance to the forms. One day they look solid and 'real' and they seem to hinge upon each other and splinter and creak, fall with a thud to the bottom of the canvas and drag across the surface, and the next day they are like dust, all lightweight and just stuck there.

That is why my pictures don't look like modern art. It's some sort of timidity on my part I'm sure.