"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 always felt that my work hadn't much to do with art; my admirations for other art had very little room to show themselves in my work because I hoped that if I concentrated enough the intensity of scrutiny alone would force life into the pictures. I ignored the fact that art, after all, derives from art. Now I realize that this is the case."
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Source: Lucian Freud, Rolf Lauter, Jean Christophe Ammann, Craig Hartley, Museum für Moderne Kunst (Frankfurt am Main, Germany) (2001). “Lucian Freud: naked portraits : Werke der 40er bis 90er Jahre”, Hatje Cantz Publishers
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"Painting is sometimes like those recipes where you do all manner of elaborate things to a duck, and then end up putting it on one side and only using the skin."
"The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real."
"What do I ask of a painting? I ask it to astonish, disturb, seduce, convince."
"The aura given out by a person or object is as much a part of them as their flesh. The effect that they make in space is as bound up with them as might be their colour or smell ... Therefore the painter must be as concerned with the air surrounding his subject as with the subject itself. It is through observation and perception of atmosphere that he can register the feeling that he wishes his painting to give out."
"Everything is autobiographical and everything is a portrait."