Quotes About Originality

I never paid attention to what was contemporary or what was commercial, it didn't mean anything to me.

'The Restraint of Beasts' is a painful subject. We'd shot 60% of the film when I had to stop. The material looks great, like nothing I've ever done or even seen before. It could have been really great, definitely original.

It does not matter how badly you paint so long as you don't paint badly like other people.

I paint what I see, not what a camera would see.

I paint stupid things; that's what I do. I can't think of anything more boring than a really beautiful thing. You have to mess it up. There has to be something a little kinky to keep their attention.

But I'm the only one who can paint the moon, because I'm the only one who knows whether that's right or not.

I really enjoy squeezing out a big lump of paint directly onto the canvas and leaving it; fresh, immediate and sometimes shocking.

I also had this artist friend who'd paint butterflies and things like that on my head.

As long as you're true to you, you believe it and you make others believe it, then what you're doing is just art. If you give everybody a blank canvas and some paint, not everybody's picture is going to be exactly the same, but it's still art. I just do what I do.

Pollock really invented something. No one painted like him - or de Kooning or Still.

I always think that painters are fighting over the last original brushstroke. To find your own voice is incredibly hard.

My painting does not come from the easel.

With a painting, you don't have to go back and paint it again.

You don't need a framework. You need a painting, not a frame.

When I get my hands on painting materials I don't give a damn about other people's painting... every generation must start again afresh.

I have never subscribed to the Dirty Pallet school of painting.

If I was painting or writing, I wouldn't veer away from things because they seemed unsavoury to me. So as an actor, I kind of think the same way. I should do things that are different and interesting and shed light on the craziness of the world.

I always wanted to do something creative, but as much as I'm creative, it's in a really hard-core, right-brained way. For me, painting doesn't do it for me. There's no constraint.

A great painting is a great painting.

No painting is ever not an infinitely reproducible image any more.

All the fingerprint paintings are done without a grid.

My early paintings weren't that good - I was very influenced by Francis Bacon. But there was a kind of intensity there. And however influenced they may have been by other people, even my earliest paintings were recognisably my own.

The truth is that... if you put any idea out there that's kind of flashy, you have many, many people that are going to be copying it. This happens whether you do movies, paintings or music.

Sean and I are fighting so many cliches, it's funny. But ultimately we just want to play people the songs we wrote while we were in our pajamas, in love.