Lucian Freud Quotes

The model should only serve the very private function for the painter of providing the starting point for his excitement

The painter makes real to others his innermost feelings about all that he cares for. A secret becomes known to everyone who views the picture through the intensity with which it is felt.

I paint people, not because of what they are like, not exactly in spite of what they are like, but how they happen to be.

I am only interested in painting the actual person, in doing a painting of them, not in using them to some ulterior end of art. For me, to use someone doing something not native to them would be wrong.

I have a hatred of habit and routine. And what dogs love is just that. They like regular everything, and I don’t have regular anything. I have a timetable, but no routine.

I have a timetable, but no routine.

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

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

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

A moment of complete happiness never occurs in the creation of a work of art. The promise of it is felt in the act of creation but disappears towards the completion of the work. For it is then the painter realises that it is only a picture he is painting. Until then he had almost dared to hope the picture might spring to life.

As far as I am concerned the paint is the person. I want it to work for me just as flesh does

The only way I could work properly was by using the absolute maximum of observation and concentration that I could possible muster.