10 Quotes by William Baziotes

It is the mysterious that I love in painting. It is the stillness and the silence. I want my pictures to take effect very slowly, to obsess and to haunt.

In the beginning I drew and painted from nature in order to know her. Then later, only to fall under her spell. And today, to let her mirror my thoughts and feelings.

Each painting has its own way of evolving. When the painting is finished, the subject reveals itself.

I can not evolve any concrete theory about painting.

One hundred artists introduce us to one hundred worlds.

Let the poet dream his dreams. Yet, the poet must look at the world; must enter into other men’s lives; must look at the earth and the sky, must examine the dust in the street; must walk through the world and his mirror.

The large gray spiked form rising from the bottom of the picture is to me the symbol of death and ruin. And finally the black ovoid form is the symbol of fire, lava and destruction.

I consider my painting finished when my eyes goes to a particular spot on the canvas. But if I put the picture away about thirty feet on the wall and the movements keep returning to me and the eye seems to be responding to something living, then it is finished.

One can begin a picture and carry it through and stop it and do nothing about the title at all.