Latest Damian Loeb Quotes from Interviews

• Fondness for people can be terrifying, because it's intangible and it can disappear, or it can be taken away, or you can say the wrong thing. A million things, so it's so uncomfortable. So when you suddenly become aware of it because they don't call you or something for half an hour or whatever, you lose it.

  Damian Loeb

  Taken, People, Hours

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I'm a painter, I'm an artist. I take things too far sometimes. I really need some comfort.

  Damian Loeb

  Artist, Comfort, Sometimes

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I love seeing things that work in the micro and work in the macro.

  Damian Loeb

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• The landscape is one of the kinds that I think, at least this body of work is the least selfish of the stuff that I've done. It's all selfish. It is making images of things that I want to see, that turn me on, that make me happy, that satisfy me.

  Damian Loeb

  Selfish, Thinking, Done

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• Each painting, I feel like I kind of might have gotten something. If I feel like I totally got it, there's probably something wrong and it's not finished. And if I really feel like I understand it then I'm done with these paintings and I'll have to do something else.

  Damian Loeb

  Done, Painting, Kind

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• There's the people who have one of these cell phones in their pockets and don't have a clue how it's made. But I really want to understand.

  Damian Loeb

  People, Clue, Cell Phone

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• Every show I've done, I've just wanted to understand something of this weird life that I woke up in. I've never woken up in anyone else's life, so I've got to understand this one. The only skill I was given is this painting.

  Damian Loeb

  Done, Painting

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I started getting afraid of dying. I don't have any religion and I wanted to understand something about these greater powers without anthropomorphizing it.

  Damian Loeb

  Dying

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I wanted to finally feel better about understanding. I painted my wife because I wanted to understand her. I can talk to her, but I didn't understand why I was so compelled.

  Damian Loeb

  Feel Better, Wife, Understanding

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• Now that I'm a father of three kids, suddenly the whole world seems different. I don't want to take anything for granted. If you gaze on something and you appreciate it, you become a part of that circle. That seemed to me to be the only relevance I could understand. The space, the time and the vastness of it all was overwhelming. I needed to understand it or I just was lost.

  Damian Loeb

  Father, Kids, Appreciate

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• Beauty has became a pejorative word in art. It was not something one should aspire to, because it was pedestrian. Beautiful things became cheap and easy. If it's cheap and easy, then upper classes aren't going to aspire to it. So, they have to find something more esoteric. I wanted the paintings to be realistic enough that you would have the ability to forget that I'm showing them to you.

  Damian Loeb

  Beautiful, Art, Painting

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• Every art critic and every writer doesn't have a frame to start off from. If I made a statement saying, "This is Abstract Expressionism," they could go, "Well, he failed miserably," or, "Fantastic, this is a new genius!" But in art history, I don't see any of the artists I like spewing bullshit. I don't see anyone recording it or pronouncing what they were doing.

  Damian Loeb

  Art, Bullshit, Genius

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I try to write art theory down and understand it but I'm not a writer. I don't want to impress people with my writing. I'd rather impress people with my ability to see and feel it and then share that.

  Damian Loeb

  Art, Writing, People

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• It's been so much a part of my life the thinking that I go through is crucial. I found that if I don't paint for around a week, I get practically suicidal. It took a long time to figure out why I had these mood swings, and I finally figured out it's because I haven't painted.

  Damian Loeb

  Suicidal, Thinking, Long

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I've always wished that I had a great ability to verbalize art theory and find a way that I fit in to the whole lineage, but I don't have a clue.

  Damian Loeb

  Art, Clue, Fit

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• All I want to do is realism and follow the tradition of realism. And explore what realism should be now be after the ubiquity of smartphones. I'm trying to answer the question. I don't think I'll ever have the words, but hopefully I'll have a few images.

  Damian Loeb

  Thinking, Trying, Tradition

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• We're making so many images today and it's unbelievable. I shoot stuff all the time. I try to figure a lot out before I paint. I do a tremendous amount of shooting.

  Damian Loeb

  Trying, Today, Paint

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I don't try to force-feed it or put any things on the images until I'm making a painting. It's not photorealism. Photorealism's goal is to reproduce a photograph. The best photorealism can't beat a printer, and I have a really nice printer. I don't want to go blind doing what a printer can do.

  Damian Loeb

  Nice, Goal, Trying

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• Photorealism was this fantastic movement in like the late '60s and '70s, because photography finally became something that everyone could produce. Photorealism was and should've been a very short element. But the thing is, photography is so satisfying. Certainly when it's well done.

  Damian Loeb

  Photography, Done, Fantastic

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• Photorealism says: to fool your eye. That isn't what I've been interested in doing.

  Damian Loeb

  Eye, Fool

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• Star Wars came out when I was seven. It was so different from anything else, like peeking into the land of Oz. All you wanted to do was see it again and go back and see more of it. That feeling is not easy to reproduce. Eventually, you give up and try to recreate that feeling yourself.

  Damian Loeb

  Giving Up, War, Feelings

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I'm interested in visual vocabulary, like Andy Warhol was interested in that vocabulary of advertisements and television and pop culture. I do a great deal of tropes. This past decade has seen a new term, "meme," which is exactly what I'm studying.

  Damian Loeb

  Past, Culture, Study

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• Every time I have people over, I watch how long they look at every part of the painting, or pictures on my computer. I have a few close friends and people that are constants. Whether I like their opinion or not, I've been hearing it for a long time and I can use it as this constant. I mentally pay attention to how long they look at every image, which ones they pause on and what parts of it they look at.

  Damian Loeb

  Long, People, Attention

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• Every single painting is different. I'm always trying to figure out what I'm interested in. Usually when I go through and I make the collages or the images for ideas that I want to paint, it's like an Ouija board. Each painting I do is trying to understand what the hell I'm looking at, or want to look at.

  Damian Loeb

  Trying, Different, Painting

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

You May Also Like:

Jeffrey Deitch

Will Cotton

Roni Horn

Plum Sykes