William Dobell quotes:

Honing a thing down until you can still get through with economy, that's power.

Honing a thing down until you can still get through with economy, that's power. Learn your technique thoroughly, immerse yourself in it, and then just throw it all out the window, and express what you feel... and it will come through that you are a technician.

my sitters get tired waiting for commissioned portraits. If they commission me they have to wait years sometimes because I discard so many.

The real artist is striving to depict his subject's character and to stress the caricature, but at least it is art which is alive.

A sincere artist is not one who makes a faithful attempt to put on to canvas what is in front of him, but one who tries to create something which is, in itself, a living thing.

I am always worried whether I am doing my best work.

I never wanted to be commissioned to paint portraits. I like to choose my own subject and make a character study from it.

I paint as I want to with no holds barred. I am more contented lately than I have been for a long time about my work. But not dangerously so.

My best work is always done... when I'm experimenting. If I stop experimenting I feel it just becomes a drudgery.

So long as people expect paintings to be simply coloured photographs they get no individuality and, in the case of portraits, no characterisation.