When you see the holy halo around the holy heads on holy paintings - the halo is a bright light so you can't see the face. The face comes in darkness because it would be too beautiful to see. If there were such a thing as a holy person, a god, with a halo around his head, you wouldn't be able to see his face because the beauty would be terrifying.

Pat Steir

Categorized in : Beautiful Darkness Light

An artist needs to become familiar with that which is most hidden from the self by the self. For this one thing which one fears to know is often the driving force in one's life. These recognitions seen in art are the difference between decent, extraordinary and great.

differences self art

To handle paint the way Pollock did, you need the muscularity of a ballet dancer.

dancer ballet needs

I have a friend who says a beautiful painting can cure headaches, but I want it to cure a little bit more! I want it to cure the society of voting for Donald Trump.

voting want beautiful

I have my moods, but I can always see something beautiful.

something-beautiful mood beautiful

Painting is an object, but it's also a voice. I don't see them as objects; I see them as voices.

objects painting voice

The spiritual in my art is giving up control. My paintings are based on what I can do, and what I can do is not controlled. So I give up control, and that's the spiritual aspect of the work - taking what comes and relinquishing control. Although they look very controlled, they're really not, because it's all poured paint.

giving-up spiritual art

Everything you do on Earth is political.

political earth

We live in a time when people are afraid of beauty, because beauty passes; you can't hang on to it. And even if you see something or someone beautiful, the next time you hear it, it sounds different. So you can't cling to beauty; beauty passes and when that passes, you realize you pass too, and you will die. And that's why people cry at a beautiful view, a beautiful lecture, a beautiful painting, a new baby.

views beautiful baby

Art is the most important way of recording history.

important way art

Art is a way you discover the past, and so it brings the past into the present and the future. That's why we have anthropologists who dig up the art from the past. You can see the refinement in the society by the art. And people will see our lack of refinement when they dig up our art.

people past art

Art as a political gesture is committed to making something beautiful, and then understanding what beauty is in your own time, because what we think of as beauty changes with time. The notion of beauty everywhere changes.

beautiful art thinking

I want art to affect the viewer and for the viewer to take it away to enhance, embrace, and elevate life. That's the spiritual aspect. Painting is a spiritual practice, but sometimes it is hard to give up control!

giving-up spiritual art

I'm purposeless. I'm making art because I want you to look at that painting and I want it to affect you in some way, to change what you see, to change how you see it. To change how you see something, whatever.

want looks art

Every piece of art will be if it's lucky enough to be dug up, if there's anything to dig up.

pieces lucky art

I consider my work non-objective and I think abstract is an abstraction of something, like a landscape. Abstraction means something is abstracted. It relates to something. Non-objective relates to nothing. It has no object.

landscape mean thinking