Alice Neel Quotes

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

  Alice Neel

  Art, Two, Art Is

  Alice Neel, Amy Young, Robert Miller Gallery (New York, N.Y.) (2002). “Alice Neel: black and white”

  49 Copy quote

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

  Alice Neel

  God, Art, Women

  63 Copy quote

• You should keep on painting no matter how difficult it is, because this is all part of experience, and the more experience you have, the better it is...unless it kills you, and then you know you have gone too far.

  Alice Neel

  Inspirational, Life, Beautiful

  43 Copy quote

• All experience is great providing you live through it.
  If it kills you, you've gone too far.

  Alice Neel

  Gone, Ifs, Providing

  28 Copy quote

• 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.

  Alice Neel

  Character, Done, World

  15 Copy quote

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

  Alice Neel

  Art, People, Humanity

  22 Copy quote

• 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.

  Alice Neel

  World, Canvas, Minutes

  Carolyn Kinder Carr, Alice Neel (2002). “Alice Neel: women”, Rizzoli Intl Pubns

  15 Copy quote

• 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.

  Alice Neel

  Country, New York, Race

  10 Copy quote

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

  Alice Neel

  Humanity, Ifs

  15 Copy quote

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

  Alice Neel

  Artist, Soul, Portraiture

  15 Copy quote

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

  Alice Neel

  Determination, World, Want

  9 Copy quote

• Nobody knows what makes good art. As an artist, when it happens, you're grateful, and then you get on with it.

  Alice Neel

  Art, Grateful, Standards

  8 Copy quote

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

  Alice Neel

  Freedom

  9 Copy quote

• You know it's very hard to maintain a theory in the face of life that comes crashing about you.

  Alice Neel

  Faces, Theory, Knows

  17 Copy quote

• Lucky for me, as old as I am, I can still change.

  Alice Neel

  Lucky, Stills, I Can

  15 Copy quote

• 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.

  Alice Neel

  Art, Drawing, People

  18 Copy quote

• When I was in my studio I didn't give a damn what sex I was... I thought art is art.

  Alice Neel

  Art, Sex, Giving

  10 Copy quote

• 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.

  Alice Neel

  Mean, Privilege, Painting

  7 Copy quote

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

  Alice Neel

  Thinking, Paint, Theory

  8 Copy quote

• When women finally get liberated, they'll do the same that men do--dog eat dog-- that's what our culture is.... Not cooperation but assassination. Women will cooperate until they attain certain goals. Then one will begin to destroy the other.

  Alice Neel

  Dog, Men, Goal

  9 Copy quote

• I thought you had to give up a lot for art, and you did. It required complete concentration. It also required that whatever money you had had to be put into art materials.

  Alice Neel

  Art, Giving Up, Sacrifice

  8 Copy quote

• When women finally get liberated, they'll do the same that men do - dog eat dog - that's what our culture is.

  Alice Neel

  Dog, Men, Culture

  5 Copy quote

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