Top Alice Neel Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Alice Neel Biography

Alice Neel (January 28, 1900 – October 13, 1984) was an American visual artist, who was known for her portraits depicting friends, family, lovers, poets, artists and strangers. Her paintings have an expressionistic use of line and color, psychological acumen, and emotional intensity. Neel was called "one of the greatest portrait artists of the 20th century" by Barry Walker, curator of modern and contemporary art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, which organized a retrospective of her work in 2010.

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Alice Neel Quotes

Lucky for me, as old as I am, I can still change.

Change, I Can, Lucky, Old, Stills

I paint; I'm a woman but I don't paint china. The first time I got a canvas I felt free. Art is overreaction to life. I love these early drawings; they show my innocent beginnings in a small town. Life is a sentence -- you live it out. Maybe these portraits jump out at you too much. People like things that conform.

Art, Drawing, Jump, Life, People, Show

I do not pose my sitters. I do not deliberate and then concoct. . . Before painting, when I talk to the person, they unconsciously assume their most characteristic pose, which in a way involves all their character and social standing - what the world has done to them and their retaliation.

Character, Done, Painting, Standing, World

I know all the theory of everything but when I paint I don't think of anything except the subject and me.

Except, Paint, Theory, Think, Thinking

You should keep on painting no matter how difficult it is, because this is all part of experience, and the more experience you have, the better it is. . . unless it kills you, and then you know you have gone too far.

Beautiful, Experience, Inspirational, Keep, Life, Painting

Like Chekhov, I am a collector of souls. . . if I hadn't been an artist, I could have been a psychiatrist.

Artist, Chekhov, Collector, Portraiture, Soul

You know it's very hard to maintain a theory in the face of life that comes crashing about you.

Faces, Hard, Know, Knows, Maintain, Theory

The place where I had freedom most was when I painted. I was completely and utterly myself.

Completely, Freedom, Painted, Place, Utterly

If you're sufficiently tenacious and interested, you can accomplish what you want to accomplish in this world.

Accomplish, Determination, Interested, Sufficiently, Want, World

All experience is great providing you live through it. If it kills you, you've gone too far.

Gone, Ifs, Live, Providing

The minute I sat in front of a canvas I was happy. Because it was a world, and I could do what I liked in it.

Canvas, Happy, Liked, Minute, Minutes, World

I thought you had to give up a lot for art, and you did. It required complete concentration. It also required that whatever money you had had to be put into art materials.

Art, Giving Up, Materials, Money, Required, Sacrifice

Whether I'm painting or not, I have this overweening interest in humanity. Even if I'm not working, I'm still analyzing people.

Analyzing, Art, Humanity, Painting, People

You can't leave humanity out. If you didn't have humanity, you wouldn't have anything.

Humanity, Ifs, Leave