Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Alice Neel

Quote by Alice Neel

“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.”

Quote by Alice Neel

Author

Alice Neel
Alice Neel

Alice Neel was an American painter and sculptor renowned for her realistic and emotionally charged portraits. Her work primarily focused on the lives of the working class, the poor, and the marginalized, reflecting a profound empathy and social consciousness. Over the course of her five-decade career, Neel produced a vast body of work that has been recognized for its raw honesty and powerful imagery. more

You May Also Like

“In the end, I feel that one has to have a bit of neurosis to go on being an artist. A balanced human seldom produces art. It's that imbalance which impels us. I often think that all I want to do now is to avoid suicide, accidental or otherwise. Other than that, I think living on the edge is what drives my work and me beyond a certain point. The artist lives with anxiety. When you finally reach a plateau of achievement, there comes a new anxiety - the hunger to push on still further. That angst is what makes you go forward.”

“Their [artists'] essential effort is to catapult themselves wholly, without holding back one bit, into a course of action without having any idea where they will end up. They are like riders who gallop into the night, eagerly leaning on their horse's neck, peering into a blinding rain. And they have to do it over and over again.”