"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 want paint to work as flesh... my portraits to be of the people, not like them. Not having a look of the sitter, being them ... As far as I am concerned the paint is the person. I want it to work for me just as flesh does."
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Source: National Gallery (Great Britain), Lucian Freud (1987). “The artist's eye: Lucian Freud : an exhibition of National Gallery Paintings selected by the artist 17 June - 16 August 1987”
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More quotes by Lucian Freud
"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."