Bram van Velde Quotes

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The beauty other people create is not for the artists. Artists have to live alone.

Bram van Velde
I don't like talking. I don't like people talking to me... Painting is silence.

Bram van Velde
I am powerless, helpless. Each time it's a leap in the dark. A deliberate encounter with the unknown.

Bram van Velde
The greatest moment is when you realize that the painting you've just finished is nothing. When you manage to detach yourself from it.

Bram van Velde
I don't know if I've got close enough [in two recent paintings he made] to what I was really trying to achieve. But at least I've tried, I've made the attempt. I've done what I could. I've gone as far as my powers permitted.

Bram van Velde
Perhaps he Mondrian was too faithful to a single discovery. And perhaps that kind of painting was right for the period. But now peace and harmony are no longer possible. There is only anguish.

Bram van Velde
It is important to see that my paintings are ultimately stimulating. They are not at all the kind of thing that inspires despair.

Bram van Velde
I need to go towards the illogical. This world we live in destroys us. It is always governed by the same laws. You have to create images that don't belong to it. That are totally different from those it presents us.

Bram van Velde
I think there is a degree of primitivism in what I do... You have to see without illusions. Without trying to protect yourself.

Bram van Velde
I'm now in a big working period, which takes me up so much that hardly anything of me remains. I have never been strong in theories and this becomes worse and worse. My work should give me satisfaction, and that is about life and death... Several paintings full of life and beauty arose again and give me the courage and joy to proceed on the road. There are also several paintings in which I am involved for less than half, discharges in a short time, which have existence for a while, but will not reach shaping.

Bram van Velde
Because it's an adventure out of all proportion. You have to devote all your strength to it and it's never enough.

Bram van Velde
Something is trying to come into the world. But I don't know what it is. I never start by knowing. It's impossible to know. Truth is not knowledge.

Bram van Velde
Paris with its multitude of art directions calls continuously to the deepest penetration and recognition of your inner essence. Only in this way it is possible to create work that refers the time span.

Bram van Velde
Each time it's an attempt to get there. To get to see. To get where you can see.

Bram van Velde
Painting doesn't interest me... What I paint is beyond painting.

Bram van Velde
There is only the present. A painting is an instant of time that has escaped oblivion.

Bram van Velde
Artists who are the defenders of true life become phonies. That's the perfidious thing about this world. Society turns anyone with a bit of life inside them into a medical case.

Bram van Velde
Most people's lives are governed by willpower. An artist is someone who has no will.

Bram van Velde
I have to try to see where seeing is no longer possible, where visibility is gone.

Bram van Velde
Of course painting is ridiculous. But it's the only way I've got to get closer to life.

Bram van Velde
Painting, an oeuvre, is not such a big deal, it is so unimportant. But that's precisely what makes it interesting.

Bram van Velde
The artist is living a secret that he has to make manifest

Bram van Velde
A painter is someone who can't use words. His only escape is to be a seer.

Bram van Velde
I'm trying to see, when everything in this world conspires to prevent us from seeing.

Bram van Velde
Mondrian? His mind was too subtle. He worked in the light. I work in the darkness... Mondrian is the Buddha of painting. I saw him once. You wondered how a man could radiate such charisma.

Bram van Velde