Richard Diebenkorn quotes:

My father didn't think being an artist was a respectable or worthy goal for a man.

My father didn't think being an artist was a respectable or worthy goal for a man. He hoped I would see my way to more serious work and would find myself turning towards medicine, law, or business.

Don't be a Pollyanna!

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.

'Abstract' literally means to draw from or separate. In this sense every artist is abstract... a realistic or nonobjective approach makes no difference. The result is what counts.

I don't go into the studio with the idea of 'saying' something. What I do is face the blank canvas and put a few arbitrary marks on it that start me on some sort of dialogue.

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

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

With rare exceptions, I respond most to painting that cuts across grain rather than following it. I think the artist here can get in touch with that grain rather than simply feel its flow. And he really can't cut right across it anyway.

My insights come in periods of working. There are wonderful moments of surprise, but I'm superstitious enough not to want to talk about them.

Use and respond to the initial fresh qualities but consider them absolutely expendable.

When I am halfway there with a painting, it can occasionally be thrilling... But it happens very rarely; usually it's agony... I go to great pains to mask the agony. But the struggle is there. It's the invisible enemy.

As a work progresses, its power to elicit and dictate response mounts. There seems to be an optimum moment when this power is at its greatest which just precedes the point where 'elicit' is no longer apt usage. 'Dictates' is the word for this condition and tyranny is the adversary.

In abstract painting, I worried about the limited range of possibilities that, as time went on, became increasingly important to me. I wanted to express or deal with differences that an all-over paint and canvas 'presence' neutralized.

I want a painting to be difficult to do. The more obstacles, obstructions, problems - if they don't overwhelm - the better. I would like to feel that I am involved at any stage of the painting with all its moments, not just this 'now' moment where a superficial grace is so available.

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

All paintings start out of a mood, out of a relationship with things or people, out of a complete visual impression. To call this expression abstract seems to me often to confuse the issue. Abstract means literally to draw from or separate. In this sense every artist is abstract . . . a realistic or non-objective approach makes no difference. The result is what counts.

And I can just see that sometimes the technique is blasting powder rather than steady struggle.

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

Don't 'discover' a subject of any kind.

I can never accomplish what I want - only what I would have wanted had I thought of it beforehand.

I have found in my still-life work that I seem to be able to tell what objects are important to me by what tends to stay in the painting as it develops.

I keep plastering it until it comes around to what I want, in terms of all I know and think about painting now, as well as in terms of the initial observation.

I want painting to be difficult to do.

I would like the colors, their shapes and positions to be arrived at in response to and dictated by the condition of the total space at the time they are considered.

If you get an image try to destroy it.

In a successful painting everything is integral - all the parts belong to the whole. If you remove an aspect or element you are removing its wholeness.

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.

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

My freedom consists in my moving about within the narrow frame that I have assigned myself for each one of my undertakings.

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.

One wants to see the artifice of the thing as well as the subject.

Somehow don't be bored, but if you must, use it in action. Use its destructive potential.