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I want to expand the question of when something is done. I want to vex the ending. I want to mess around with that. I like the idea that if you make a work that has no clear ending, then you must play with the ending. Because if you don't, you're not highlighting the weird, lovely openness of abstraction.

Amy Sillman

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Amy Sillman
Age: 58
Born: 1966
Born: January 1
Artist
Drawer
Painter
Detroit
Michigan
Make
Clear
Expand
Like
Idea
Abstraction
Around
Openness
Play
Ending
Done
Mess
Must
Weird
Work
Lovely
Something
Question
Highlighting

More quotes by Amy Sillman

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Every painting I've ever done has like 100 paintings under it.
Amy Sillman
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You can make a beautiful thing, but there's no problem in it. I like the idea of doing a thing, wrecking a thing, questioning a thing to the point where you have pushed it to the edge, and then recuperating it.
Amy Sillman
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All accidents and experiments, and discoveries, are what my work is about. The problem that I have as an artist is being way too critical.
Amy Sillman
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I made silk screens of my drawings. I could add a drawing that was made with a machine or digitally to a drawing that was made by hand. What I love is that you can't tell how they're made. For some reason, fooling the eye really excites me.
Amy Sillman
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I've never read a book on shape. I've read books on gesture I've read tons of books on color, surface, field, ground, representation, abstraction. But I've never read a book on what a shape is.
Amy Sillman
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Being bad. Discomfort with your body. Bad self image. All those things turn you into an artist. The same things that keep you from being in a proper marriage.
Amy Sillman
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It's more this instinct to get in trouble, and then get myself out of trouble. That's what painting is for me.
Amy Sillman
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At some point, I get a weird feeling, and that's when I know it's done. I probably ruin a lot of really perfectly fine things. So part of working on paper, and trying to work really fast, is to see if I can expand the area of not being driven by taste. Not saying, This looks good, I'll stop.
Amy Sillman
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I make paintings really slowly because I change them and change them and change them and change them and change them. I don't really know how to not do that. I'm not very free in a way. Even though it looks free. But it's not.
Amy Sillman
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A lot of what I do in my work is taking a thing and either washing it off, scraping it, covering it, scraping it and then washing it, turning it upside down. Making it somehow blind.
Amy Sillman
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The works have to look like they're confident. But they also have to look sort of troubled. It's this weird thing: Does that look confident and troubled? It's a bit like difficult poetry.
Amy Sillman
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That’s the huge problem with an abstract painting. When are you done? You’re done when you don’t want to do it anymore.
Amy Sillman
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I'm in this process of trying to create a free space. Like an open field, where figure and ground are in very ambivalent, complex relationships. On top of that, I also wanted to see if I could try to blurt something out, or make something completely immediate, that ends up fitting perfectly.
Amy Sillman
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In my work, we're not looking at an icon, we're not looking at a sign, we're not looking at a representation. We're looking at something. I do have this feeling of trust that people can read it for themselves.
Amy Sillman