29 Quotes by Richard Diebenkorn

Abstract means literally to draw from or separate. In this sense every artist is abstract.

My freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful, the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles.

Don’t be a Pollyanna!

Attempt what is not certain. Certainty may or may not come later. It may then be a valuable delusion.

Do search, but in order to find other than what is searched for.

Mistakes can’t be erased, but they move you from your present position.

I trust the symbol that is arrived at in the making of the painting. Meaningful symbols aren’t invented as such, they are made or discovered as symbol later.

All paintings start out of a mood, out of a relationship with things or people, out of a complete visual impression.

Maybe the given person, cup, or landscape is lost before one gets to painting. A figure exerts a continuing and unspecified influence on a painting as the canvas develops. The represented forms are loaded with psychological feeling. It can’t ever just be painting.