Inscribe all human effort with one word, Artistry's haunting curse, the Incomplete!

I am complete but I'm not finished.

Original in Dutch: Kunst lijkt me nooit volledig of zuiver te maken. Het is of ik altijd verwikkeld ben in het melodrama van de alledaagsheid. [...]

Les artistes qui cherchent la perfection en tout sont ceux qui ne peuvent l'atteindre en aucune partie.

No matter how successful we are, at some point we will become conscious that we feel incomplete

art is never finished, only abandoned

May I never be complete. May I never be content. May I never be perfect.

Art is never finished, only abandoned.

As an artist, you're never happy with anything you do. It's part of the process. You're never really happy. I'm certainly not. That's a good thing. It means you're always striving to do better. You hope the next piece will be better.

I don't like that word 'finish'. When something is finished, that means it's dead, doesn't it? I believe in everlastingness. I never finish a painting – I just stop working on it for a while. I like painting because it's something I never come to the end of. Sometimes I paint a picture, then I paint it all out. Sometimes I'm working on fifteen or twenty pictures at the same time. I do that because I want to – because I like to change my mind so often. The thing to do is always to keep starting to paint, never finishing painting. [quote of 1948]

I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.

Às vezes a gente se imagina incompleto e é apenas jovem.

Art is never completed, only abandoned.

I can never stand still. I must explore and experiment. I am never satisfied with my work. I resent the limitations of my own imagination.