The Great Silence (2012), Lorrie Fredette

www.LorrieFredette.com

Jasper Johns on what "one wants from painting"

"When you begin work with the idea of suggesting , say, a particular psychological state of affairs, you have eliminated so much from the process of painting that you make an artificial statement, which, I think, is not desirable. I think one has to work with everything and accept the kind of statement which results as unavoidable, or as a helpless situation.  I think that one wants from painting a sense of life. The final suggestion, the final gesture, the final statement has to be not a deliberate statement but a helpless statement.  It has to be what you can't avoid saying, not what you set out to say."

From Interviews with American Artist, by David Sylvester

Franz Kline on "why"

"It just seems as though there are forms in some experience in your life that have an excitement for you."

From Interviews with Artists, by David Sylvester

David Smith on inspirations

"They can begin with any idea.  They can begin with a found object; they can begin with no object; they can begin sometimes even when I'm sweeping the floor and I stumble and kick a few parts that happen to be thrown into an alignment that sets me off on thinking.  It sets off a vision of how it would finish if it all had that kind of accidental beauty to it.  They go that way, they go anyway."

David Smith, in Interviews with American Artists by David Sylvester