Quotes by Philip Guston

• Painting is an illusion, a piece of magic, so what you see is not what you see.
• I am a night painter, so when I come into the studio the next morning the delirium is over.
• In my experience a painting is not made with colors and paint at all. I don't know what a painting is; who knows what sets off even the desire to paint?
• Painting and sculpture are very archaic forms. It's the only thing left in our industrial society where an individual alone can make something with not just his own hands, but brains, imagination, heart maybe.
• Painting seems like some kind of peculiar miracle that I need to have again and again.
• The painting is not on a surface, but on a plane which is imagined. It moves in a mind. It is not there physically at all. It is an illusion, a piece of magic, so that what you see is not what you see.
• I don't know what a painting is; who knows what sets off even the desire to paint? It might be things, thoughts, a memory, sensations, which have nothing to do directly with painting itself. They can come from anything and anywhere.
• To paint is a possessing rather than a picturing.
• Usually I am on a work for a long stretch, until a moment arrives when the air of the arbitrary vanishes, and the paint falls into positions that feel destined.
• Look at any inspired painting. It's like a gong sounding; it puts you in a state of reverberation.