Philip Pearlstein Quotes

It is what is painted between the outlines that makes the difference between merely competent painting and really meaningful art.

The effort of painting from life has cost my models a great deal of physical discomfort, and cost me a great deal of money in model fees... I have wanted to make the camera obsolete... because, in my reading about early 20th century art, I found that the most frequently used argument made in favor of abstraction was that the camera made realist painting obsolete.

Look slowly and hard at something subtle and small.

I try to find a compositional structure in the subject itself, in nature... I rely on the angle where the wall meets the floor as a constant reference point, and against that I oppose the movements of the model's limbs.

There will always be those who want to make paintings of the human form with all its parts all where they should be, in spite of progress.

Only the mature artist who works from a model is capable of seeing the body for itself, only he has the opportunity for prolonged viewing.

I get my highs from using my eyes.

I decided that expressionism was a cheap way of getting a reaction - show anybody ripped apart, and you get sympathy. I was deliberately trying to show the human body as whole and relatively healthy.

I suggest that it is the honesty of the attempt to recreate the forms and spaces visually without artistic editing that is one of the hallmarks of realist painting.

Each work has to be done as intensely as possible.