Quote

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

Alice Neel

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Alice Neel
Age: 84 †
Born: 1900
Born: January 28
Died: 1984
Died: October 13
Illustrator
Painter
Photographer
Printmaker
Sculptor
Visual Artist
Gladwyne
Pennsylvania
Alice neel Pintura girl
Alice Hartley Neel
Maintain
Theory
Face
Faces
Comes
Hard
Life
Crashing

More quotes by Alice Neel

Image
I know all the theory of everything but when I paint I don't think of anything except the subject and me.
Alice Neel
Image
Nobody knows what makes good art. As an artist, when it happens, you're grateful, and then you get on with it.
Alice Neel
Image
All experience is great providing you live through it. If it kills you, you've gone too far.
Alice Neel
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Lucky for me, as old as I am, I can still change.
Alice Neel
Image
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
Image
The place where I had freedom most was when I painted. I was completely and utterly myself.
Alice Neel
Image
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
Image
Like Chekhov, I am a collector of souls... if I hadn't been an artist, I could have been a psychiatrist.
Alice Neel
Image
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
Image
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
Image
When women finally get liberated, they'll do the same that men do - dog eat dog - that's what our culture is.
Alice Neel
Image
I don't paint like a woman is supposed to paint. Thank God, art doesn't bother about things like that.
Alice Neel
Image
When I was in my studio I didn't give a damn what sex I was... I thought art is art.
Alice Neel
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
If you're sufficiently tenacious and interested, you can accomplish what you want to accomplish in this world.
Alice Neel
Image
You can't leave humanity out. If you didn't have humanity, you wouldn't have anything.
Alice Neel