Alex Costakis Quotes

Up until 35 I had a slightly skewed world view. I honestly believed everybody in the world wanted to make abstract paintings, and people only became lawyers and doctors and brokers and things because they couldn`t make abstract paintings.

But, after all, the aim of art is to create space - space that is not compromised by decoration or illustration, space within which the subjects of painting can live.

I was worried in the `80s that the best abstract painting had become obsessed with materiality, and painterly gestures and materiality were up against the wall.

What you see is what you see.

I want to make exalted art. A successful image has pictorial lift. I am looking for whatever is up there.

A sculpture is just a painting cut out and stood up somewhere.

I don`t like a lot of the stuff that goes on in the art world, but it`s hard to be old and like what goes on around you.

I don`t like to say I have given my life to art. I prefer to say art has given me my life.

No art is any good unless you can feel how it`s put together. By and large it`s the eye, the hand and if it`s any good, you feel the body. Most of the best stuff seems to be a complete gesture, the totality of the artist`s body; you can really lean on it.

Architecture can`t fully represent the chaos and turmoil that are part of the human personality, but you need to put some of that turmoil into the architecture, or it isn`t real.

One learns about painting by looking at and imitating other painters.

When I`m painting the picture, I`m really painting a picture. I may have a flat-footed technique, or something like that, but still, to me, the thrill, or the meat of the thing, is the actual painting. I don`t get any thrill out of laying it out.