Adolph Gottlieb Quotations

I use color in terms of emotional quality, as a vehicle for feeling... feeling is everything I have experienced or thought.

I want to express the utmost intensity of the color, bring out the quality, make it expressive.

When I work, I'm thinking in terms of purely visual effects and relations, and any verbal equivalent is something that comes afterwards. But it's inconceivable to me that I could experience things and not have them enter into my painting.

I never use nature as a starting point. I never abstract from nature; I never consciously think of nature when I paint.

In times of violence, personal predilections for niceties of colour and form seem irrelevant. All primitive expression (like the myths) reveals the constant awareness of powerful forces, the immediate presence of terror and fear.

Certain people always say we should go back to nature.I notice they never say we should go forward to nature. It seemstometheyare more concerned that we should go back, than about nature.

My favorite symbols were those which I didn't understand.

If we depart form tradition, it is out of knowledge , not innocence.

Painting is self-discovery. You arrive at the image through the act of painting.