Alice Neel

“Art is two things: a search for a road and a search for freedom.”

“The minute I sat in front of a canvas I was happy. Because it was a world, and I could do what I liked in it.”

“I know all the theory of everything but when I paint I don't think of anything except the subject and me.”

“It's a privilege, you know, to paint and it takes up a lot of time and it means there's a lot of things you don't do. But still, with me, painting was more than a profession, it was also an obsession. I had to paint.”

“Whether I'm painting or not, I have this overweening interest in humanity. Even if I'm not working, I'm still analyzing people.”

“I do not pose my sitters. I do not deliberate and then concoct... Before painting, when I talk to the person, they unconsciously assume their most characteristic pose, which in a way involves all their character and social standing - what the world has done to them and their retaliation.”

“You can't leave humanity out. If you didn't have humanity, you wouldn't have anything.”

“Whether I'm painting or not, I have this overweening interest in humanity. Even if I'm not working, I'm still analyzing people.”

“Like Chekhov, I am a collector of souls... if I hadn't been an artist, I could have been a psychiatrist.”

“The place where I had freedom most was when I painted. I was completely and utterly myself.”

“Cezanne said, 'I love to paint people who have grown old naturally in the country.' And I say I love to paint people who have been torn to shreds by the rat race in New York.”

“If you're sufficiently tenacious and interested, you can accomplish what you want to accomplish in this world.”

“I don't paint like a woman is supposed to paint. Thank God, art doesn't bother about things like that.”

“I paint; I'm a woman but I don't paint china. The first time I got a canvas I felt free. Art is overreaction to life. I love these early drawings; they show my innocent beginnings in a small town. Life is a sentence -- you live it out. Maybe these portraits jump out at you too much. People like things that conform.”

Quotes by Alice Neel