Amy Sillman Quotes

• 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

  Beautiful, Problem, Questioning

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• Every painting I've ever done has like 100 paintings under it.

  Amy Sillman

  Done, Painting

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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

  Artist, Problem

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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

  Lovely, Done, Openness

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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

  Difficult

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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

  Done, Painting, Problem

  "Blobs and Slashes, Interrupted by Forms". Interview with Ted Loos, www.nytimes.com. September 26, 2013.

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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

  Painting

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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

  People, Feelings, Representation

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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

  Painting, Trouble, Instinct

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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

  Book, Representation

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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

  Artist

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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

  Trying, Fitting

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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

  Upside Down, Blind

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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

  Feelings, Trying, Done

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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

  Eye, Love Is, Reason

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• Who would be an artist that was perfectly happy? Maybe nowadays, but when I grew up in the '60s, you had nobody in the art club who was popular. No cheerleaders in the art club. I was told that I couldn't be a painter by my first painting teacher. I said I wanted to go to Cooper and be an art student, and he said, "You'll be a waitress." It was really the strangely indifferent parenting.

  Amy Sillman

  Teacher, Art, Cheerleader

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