William Baziotes Quotes

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

— William Baziotes

“Whereas certain people start with a recollection or an experience and paint that experience, to some of us the act of doing is the experience; so that we are not quite clear why we are engaged on a particular work. And because we are more interested in plastic matters than we are in matters of words, once can begin a painting and carry it through and stop it and do nothing about the title at all. All pictures are full of association.”

— William Baziotes

“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.”

— William Baziotes

“The eye seems to be responding to something living.”

— William Baziotes

“One hundred artists introduce us to one hundred worlds.”

— William Baziotes

“I think when a man first discovers that two and two is four, there is 'beauty' in that; and we can see why. But if people stand and look at the moon and one says 'I think it's just beautiful tonight' and the other says 'The moon makes me feel awful' we are both 'clear'. A geometric shape - we know why we like it; and an unreasonable shape; it has a certain mystery that we recognize as real; but it is difficult to put these things in an objective way.”

— William Baziotes

“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.”

— William Baziotes

“As for the subject matter in my painting ... it is very often an incidental thing in the background, elusive and unclear, that really stirred me.”

— William Baziotes

“There is always an unconscious collaboration among artists ... the artist who imagine himself a Robinson Crusoe is either a primitive or a fool.”

— William Baziotes

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.

— William Baziotes

“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.”

— William Baziotes

“I kept ... returning to the (ancient Roman) wall paintings with their veiled melancholy and elegant plasticity.”

— William Baziotes

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

— 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.

— William Baziotes

“I can not evolve any concrete theory about painting.”

— William Baziotes