The process of creation becomes necessary to the painter perhaps more than is the picture. The process in fact is habit-forming
Lucian FreudAs far as I am concerned the paint is the person. I want it to work for me just as flesh does
Lucian FreudThe longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real.
Lucian FreudI would wish my portraits to be of the people, not like them. Not having a look of the sitter, being them.
Lucian FreudLosing as much money as I can get hold of is an instant solution to my economic problems.
Lucian FreudThe painter makes real to others his innermost feelings about all that he cares for. A secret becomes known to everyone who views the picture through the intensity with which it is felt.
Lucian FreudI've always wanted to create drama in my pictures, which is why I paint people. It's people who have brought drama to pictures from the beginning. The simplest human gestures tell stories.
Lucian FreudI could never put anything into a picture that wasn't actually there in front of me. That would be a pointless lie, a mere bit of artfulness.
Lucian FreudI am only interested in painting the actual person, in doing a painting of them, not in using them to some ulterior end of art. For me, to use someone doing something not native to them would be wrong.
Lucian FreudThe painting is always done very much with [the model's] co-operation. The problem with painting a nude, of course, is that it deepens the transaction. You can scrap a painting of someone's face and it imperils the sitter's self-esteem less than scrapping a painting of the whole naked body.
Lucian FreudA painter's tastes must grow out of what so obsesses him in life that he never has to ask himself what it is suitable for him to do in art.
Lucian FreudThe aura given out by a person or object is as much a part of them as their flesh. The effect that they make in space is as bound up with them as might be their colour or smell ... Therefore the painter must be as concerned with the air surrounding his subject as with the subject itself. It is through observation and perception of atmosphere that he can register the feeling that he wishes his painting to give out.
Lucian FreudI have a hatred of habit and routine. And what dogs love is just that. They like regular everything, and I don't have regular anything. I have a timetable, but no routine.
Lucian FreudSometimes, when I've been staring too hard, I've noticed that I could see the circumference of my own eye.
Lucian FreudThe paintings live because their creator has been passionately attentive to their theme, and his attention has left something for us to look at. It seems a sort of miracle.
Lucian FreudI remember Francis Bacon would say that he felt he was giving art what he thought it previously lacked. With me, it's what Yeats called the fascination with what's difficult. I'm only trying to do what I can't do.
Lucian FreudPainting is sometimes like those recipes where you do all manner of elaborate things to a duck, and then end up putting it on one side and only using the skin.
Lucian FreudA painter must think of everything he sees as being there entirely for his own use and pleasure.
Lucian FreudI don't want any colour to be noticeable... I don't want it to operate in the modernist sense as colour, something independent... Full, saturated colours have an emotional significance I want to avoid.
Lucian FreudAnd, since the model he faithfully copies is not going to be hung up next to the picture, since the picture is going to be there on its own, it is of no interest whether it is an accurate copy of the model.
Lucian FreudThe only secret I can claim to have is concentration, and that's something that can't be taught.
Lucian FreudThe paintings that really excite me have an erotic element or side to them irrespective of subject matter
Lucian FreudThe character of the artist doesn't enter into the nature of the art. Eliot said that art is the escape from personality, which I think is right. We know that Velázquez embezzled money from the Spanish court and wanted power and so on, but you can't see this in his art.
Lucian FreudWhen I look at a body it gives me choice of what to put in a painting, what will suit me and what won't
Lucian FreudI want paint to work as flesh... my portraits to be of the people, not like them. Not having a look of the sitter, being them ... As far as I am concerned the paint is the person. I want it to work for me just as flesh does.
Lucian FreudIt is the only point of getting up every morning: to paint, to make something good, to make something even better than before, not to give up, to compete, to be ambitious.
Lucian FreudThe painter must give a completely free rein to any feeling or sensations he may have and reject nothing to which he is naturally drawn.
Lucian FreudI paint people, not because of what they are like, not exactly in spite of what they are like, but how they happen to be.
Lucian Freud