43 Quotes by Wayne Thiebaud

I'm a believer in the notion that artists who do good work believe in the ideas of extremes.

If I don't have anything better to do that day, I'll copy paintings, generally by people who have some relationship to the work of the moment.

As far as I'm concerned, there is only one study and that is the way in which things relate to one another.

The most important thing is that the work has to be solid [in terms of its formal structure] and that the work accomplishes what it strives to achieve. It has to be genuine - not mannered or stylistically driven.

Art is one of the dirtiest words in our language; it's mucked up with all kinds of meanings. There's the art of plumbing; there's the art of almost anything that you can say.

An artist needs the best studio instruction, the most rigorous demands, and the toughest criticism in order to tune up his sensibilities.

We all need critical confrontation of the fullest and most extreme kind that we can get. You can unnecessarily limit yourself by choosing your criticism...

A conscious decision to eliminate certain details and include selective bits of personal experiences or perceptual nuances, gives the painting more of a multi-dimension than when it is done directly as a visual recording. This results in a kind of abstraction... and thus avoids the pitfalls of mere decoration.

Morandi gave an intimate view of his deepest thoughts. We watched him inquiring after the devilish questions of essences and substances.