Bram van Velde Quotes

You are in an area where knowledge fails. Where you have to advance in ignorance, not even knowing where you are going.

Painting is getting in touch with the truth. It's a matter of summoning up the vision I need.

It is important to see that my paintings are ultimately stimulating. They are not at all the kind of thing that inspires despair.

However terrible it is, the thing never involves any sadness

If these gouaches [Bram van Velde recently made] live at all, it is because they are true, they derive from life. They are born of the unknown – and not of habit or know-how, or intention, or of some recipe.. ..there comes a time when serious work is no longer an effort. When demanding work of that kind no longer tires you.

I don’t know if I've got close enough [in two recent paintings he made] to what I was really trying to achieve. But at least I've tried, I've made the attempt. I've done what I could. I've gone as far as my powers permitted.

Painting, an oeuvre, is not such a big deal, it is so unimportant. But that’s precisely what makes it interesting.

A painting is not a battle against other people, but against oneself.

I start off on the canvas and, little by little, it imposes its own solution. But that solution is not easy to find.

I am well aware that a painting must inevitably be a bizarre, incomprehensible thing.

It is true that other people can help you, and to lasting effect.. .If I hadn't had Beckett in 1940 [in Paris, when Van Velde was strongly demoralized by the death of his wife], I'm not sure I could have stood it. I am really not sure.. .At that time he [Beckett] he was driven by an extremely aggressive and fiery Irish spirit. That has lessened as time has gone on.. .I don't know anywhere in modern art any more faithful or more impressive picture of contemporary humanity than the one he offers us in 'The Unamable'.

Because it's an adventure out of all proportion. You have to devote all your strength to it and it's never enough.

What makes a painting fascinating is its sincerity. Sincerity is such a rare thing. Most people don't dare to be sincere.

Van Gogh.. .In this world of petty calculations, he was too intense. He frightened people. They cast him out.

Perhaps he [ Mondrian ] was too faithful to a single discovery. And perhaps that kind of painting was right for the period. But now peace and harmony are no longer possible. There is only anguish.