Quotes from Walter Darby Bannard

Power is like money. Some know how to get it; few know how to use it.

A clear idea about the nature of quality in art will always result in inferior art tailored to it.

When realistic images or patterns are seen in an abstract painting, they are often parallels brought about by processes in painting which echo processes in nature.

When good ideas get put to bad use, it is the fault of the user, not the idea.

Good art, no matter how simple or casual-seeming, always carries a high density of choice.

Postmodernism does not help us understand good art. It encourages art that can be easily understood and throws in something catchy to cover the loss of mystery.

In art there is no absolute good or bad, but it is absolute that there is good and bad.

Great art does not break with the past. It breaks with the present by emulating the best of the past.

Part of history is facts. The other part is what we find easier to believe.

Trying to be original is futile. If you have no place to go, stay home and cook.

Nothing is as hopeless as trying to justify art in words.

Convention and restriction release inhibition and provoke the imagination.

The first duty of intelligence is to recognize the obvious.

Dogmatism spreads its roots in the fertile soil of uncertainty.

When anyone can produce dreck or publish gibberish, and not only get away with it but be celebrated for it, the discipline is no longer a discipline, and it will get no respect.

Science is a matter of adjusting language to explain material reality. Art is a matter of adjusting material reality to create a sense of life.

Live to paint, don't paint to live.

What is sublime? / the artist said. / I haven't time / to be well read. / To be sub lime / I'll place, instead, / green citrus fruit / upon my head.

Postmodernism is silly and joyless at the same time.

In ART as in Life the Best Way to REMEDY mistakes is to take advantage of them.

Most people find facts irritating. Facts interfere with their systems of denial.

We learn to lie by believing words rather than experience.

The more freedom artists have to do what they want to do, the more they do what other artists are doing.

Good art has everything you need to know about it in the work, not on a wall label. Art is here to take us beyond language.