Lucian Freud Quotes & Sayings

“My work is purely autobiographical... It is about myself and my surroundings.”

“The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real.”

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

“The aura given out by a person or object is as much a part of them as their flesh.”

“I 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.”

“A 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.”

“The painter's obsession with his subject is all that he needs to drive him to work.”

“Full, saturated colours have an emotional significance I want to avoid.”

“The paintings that really excite me have an erotic element or side to them irrespective of subject matter.”

“There is a distinction between fact and truth. Truth has an element of revelation about it. If something is true, it does more than strike one as merely being so.”