Pastoral Resources

Franz Kline, who became known for his black and white paintings, did a whole series of gorgeous landscapes and wonderful portraits that may still hang in Greenwich Village.

My portraits are more about me than they are about the people I photograph.

I paint German artists whom I admire. I paint their pictures, their work as painters, and their portraits too. But oddly enough, each of these portraits ends up as a picture of a woman with blonde hair. I myself have never been able to work out why this happens.

I wanted to translate from one flat surface to another. In fact, my learning disabilities controlled a lot of things. I don't recognize faces, so I'm sure it's what drove me to portraits in the first place.

Oh, you ask me, what is the greatest torture of a person who does portraits for a living? I could fill several volumes with nice nasty stories. I don't know.

When you do portraits professionally it's not a desire, it's for money.

I do house things. I paint. I do portraits. I also paint my house.

I would wish my portraits to be of the people, not like them. Not having a look of the sitter, being them.

I have always loved reading, so was interested in the literary world, and took many literary portraits.

I'm very envious of the few artists who are any good and still do portraits.

When I look at great works of art or listen to inspired music, I sense intimate portraits of the specific times in which they were created.

If I was in love with someone, I would get their picture out of the school yearbook and do portraits. If I was curious about sex, I would draw pictures of it. There were no books for me to look at. Then I would go find my father's matches to burn the paper.

There is nothing that special to see when looking at me. I'm a painter who paints day in day out, from morning till evening - figure pictures and landscapes, more rarely portraits.

I never can pass by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York without thinking of it not as a gallery of living portraits but as a cemetery of tax-deductible wealth.

The best portraits are those in which there is a slight mixture of caricature.

People don't have time to wait for somebody to paint their portraits anymore. The money is in photography.

A person himself believes that all the other portraits are good likenesses except the one of himself.

You don't change the course of history by turning the faces of portraits to the wall.

I was going to have cosmetic surgery until I noticed that the doctor's office was full of portraits by Picasso.

I often concentrate on the eyes and lips, they are great indicators of mood and feeling, and I find that I can project character into my portraits by bringing the viewer's attention to these areas.