― Lucian Freud
Quote source: Man with a Blue Scarf page 83.
"The only secret I can claim to have is concentration, and that's something that can't be taught."
― Lucian Freud
Quote source: Man with a Blue Scarf page 208.
"I 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 Freud
"I 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 Freud
"The 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 Freud
"I 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 Freud
"The 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 Freud
"A painter must think of everything he sees as being there entirely for his own use and pleasure."
― Lucian Freud
On Models: "And, 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 Freud
Quote source: "Some Thoughts on Painting" by Lucian Freud in Encounter, vol 3 no 1, July 1954, page 23.
