‘Every man’s work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.’ Samuel Butler

‘Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.’ Oscar Wilde

‘If I could say it in words there would be no reason to paint.’  Edward Hopper

‘Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing.’  Georgia O’Keeffe

‘What moves men of genius, or rather what inspires their work, is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is still not enough.’ Eugene Delacroix

‘The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity.’ Alberto Giacometti

‘In my case all painting… is an accident. I foresee it and yet I hardly ever carry it out as I foresee it. It transforms itself by the actual paint. I don’t in fact know very often what the paint will do, and it does many things which are very much better than I could make it do.’ Francis Bacon

‘If you want to convey fact, this can only ever be done through a form of distortion. You must distort to transform what is called appearance into image.’ Francis Bacon

‘Painting reflects. It kills you in a colourful shower of emptiness. Flatness. Randomness. And beauty. Yes, it is the most pure beauty I have ever felt in my life.’ Nigel Tomm

‘Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one.’ Stella Adler

‘The world is full of confusion and contradiction. We cannot expect to do anything that is absolutely right. We can only measure rightness by the truth within ourselves. And our own truth will never be quite the same as somebody else’s. I wish that I could touch you and be sure that it was the right thing to do. I only want to touch you briefly. Just once so that you will know. We are flesh and blood and full of faults. But we are also full of warmth. The world is full of confusion but there is compassion in its midst. communication via simple touch can transmit so much of us in just one minute. Like a painting or a piece of music. I want to touch your soul. I only wish I could be sure it was the right thing to do.’ Jay Woodman

‘Painting is an art that reveals or unveils the world from an angle that the world itself does not present to us. Painting creates. It does not limit itself to imitation or reproduction. Any desire to confine painting within the limits of déjà vu would be a gross misunderstanding of the essence of what painting is. Painting allows us to see that which without it would never be seen.’ Marcel Paquet