Howard Hodgkin Quotations

When I finish a painting, it usually looks as surprising to me as to anyone else.

I think words come between the spectator and the picture.

I'm very envious of the few artists who are any good and still do portraits.

The picture surface recedes just as much in the 20th century as it did in the 15th. The techniques of making pictures have hardly changed.

In the United States there has been a kind of a structure in the Modern art world. The New York School was nearly a coherent thing-for a minute.

My friends tend to be writers. I think writers and painters are really all the same-we just sit in our rooms.

The only way an artist can communicate with the world at large is on the level of feeling.

It is simply impossible to control a large painting with the edge in the same way that you can control a small one.

A lot of people... are afraid of pictures which have visible emotions in them. They feel calmer in front of pictures which are placid.

My pictures really finish themselves.