Bram van Velde

"Part of your work feels as clear, it gives you a sense of liberation or beauty and you recognize it as necessary pavements. You are thus in a sense ready. In the other part of your work this is not the case. Therein is the hidden development, which is the true essence of art... the higher purpose, the pursuit forward that art automatically calls. The unclear part of your work needs to progress (stopping is no option, is no life, no art) and it is clear when by working with head and heart, the real step forward has been achieved."

"Paris with its multitude of art directions calls continuously to the deepest penetration and recognition of your inner essence. Only in this way it is possible to create work that refers the time span."

"Art is not for the personal satisfaction of one or the other, but art wants to return all what’s in life... Art wants to give back everything what’s in our lives. The more comprehensive the artist stands in life the more powerful his work will speak, and therefore a work of art is a measure of the mental size of his creator."

"My work is independent of my will. My best works are created when driven by an inner strength. This has nothing to do with my will. It is that immediate spontaneity of my intense way of living that makes the difference between my work and a lot of other artists who make art works with their mind."

"I'm now in a big working period, which takes me up so much that hardly anything of me remains. I have never been strong in theories and this becomes worse and worse. My work should give me satisfaction, and that is about life and death.. .Several paintings full of life and beauty arose again and give me the courage and joy to proceed on the road. There are also several paintings in which I am involved for less than half, discharges in a short time, which have existence for a while, but will not reach shaping."

"When I am painting, driven by lively tensions, I want to express what’s going on in me. When that tension has ceased, when the life in me became visible, then something happened which had to happen. Over and over again you experience a work which is created in this way. What happened? It is hard to say, because it was not my mind that led but the inner desire that revealed its inner life."

"Life and mind are continuously in conflict with each other. I want happiness, security. I won’t reach that by considerations of my mind; on the contrary they will lead to a certain despair of the inner person. Not what he thinks engages the artist, but what he feels."

"The real world with its common logic pushes us toward catastrophe. The artists seek in his work to free himself from this weight. Art is being transformed into politics, love into trade, education into an apparatus for stifling the mind. In the midst of such horrors, clearly only the dream within me has life. But how do other people live? -There is color, virginal expression - new, without a cage, without routine, without limit, a bath of sun and light. We must realize that nothing man does is of any value. The trouble is that people want to be paid. Only sick men can be artists. Their suffering pushes them into the accomplishment of deeds which reinvest the world with meaning. The sensitive man or the artist can only be a sick man in our civilized life, so full of lies. To think of art as a profession, how appealing! – Painting is man in the face of his downfall."

"A painter is someone who can't use words. His only escape is to be a seer."

"Painting is so stupid, so simple. I paint to get out of the through. I paint my misery."

"Artists don’t live in the everyday world. That’s why people think they’re an odd bunch."

"The most difficult thing is when you can’t do anything. When you just have to wait."

"The most difficult thing is not to want anything."

"Everything has to end before it can begin."

"You are in constant danger of being destroyed."

"I can’t say anything. There are no words."

"The important thing is to be nothing."

"The less you think, the better it is."

"The more you know, the less you are."

"The beauty other people create is not for the artists. Artists have to live alone."

"Everyone cheats. Only artists don’t. They don’t fool people and they aren’t fooled. They are outside all that. Nobody can understand them."

"Painting is an eye, a blinded eye that continues to see, and sees what blinds it.. ..this tiny little thing, which is nothing, which dominates life."

"Picasso.. ..the master.. ..being a master: 'I don't search, I find' [a famous quote of Picasso, where he criticize the 'searching' artists] ..the master, the mastery.. ..Producing, producing.. .He [Picasso!] only knows how to work, can’t do anything else. What lost souls!.. .The great risk is producing for its own sake. You must never force things. You just have to wait."

"In the first piece that you Beckett wrote about me [circa 1946], you never once used the word color. That was important. I was struck by it."

"To be true, you have to take the plunge, to touch bottom. But most people want to be in control. They fear the worst. You can’t control anything. What you have to do is let yourself be taken over.. .All the paintings I have made, I was compelled to make. You must never force yourself."

"They make you and you have no say in it. It’s Godot all the time. A chain around your neck and the whip cracking behind you."

"Yes, I abandoned everything. Painting required it. It was all or nothing."

"Painting is being alive. Through my painting, I beat back this world that stops us living and where we are in constant danger of being destroyed.. .No, you have to know when to keep silent."

"Painting is an aid to vision. It turns life, the complexity of life, into something visible. It reveals things that we don’t know how to see."

"Mondrian? His mind was too subtle. He worked in the light. I work in the darkness.. .Mondrian is the Buddha of painting. I saw him once. You wondered how a man could radiate such charisma."

"I'm trying to see, when everything in this world conspires to prevent us from seeing."

"I paint the impossibility of painting."

"In this world that destroys me, the only thing that I can do is to live my weakness. That weakness is my only strength."

"The artist is living a secret that he has to make manifest"

"I can't say or explain anything. Pictures don’t come from your head but from life.. .I am always looking for life. All that escapes thought or will-power."

"When you cross any border there is always an uneasy moment when you feel yourself automatically an enemy. Artists don’t belong to any group or country.. .When you are living the truth, the world no longer exists, events become unimportant. But the way of truth is not easy.. ..if you are on the side of truth, you have no power. That’s why you are always defeated. The power, all the power, is on the side of the world.. .I have been completely absorbed in my adventure. No country, no family, no ties. I didn’t exist anymore. I just had to press on."

"Life is so difficult to catch."

"Each time it’s an attempt to get there. To get to see. To get where you can see."

"Through painting I try to get closer to nothingness, to the void."

"The artist is the bearer of life."

"Life is wrecked by living."

"Oh Baudelaire.. .He used to be enormously important to me. It's thanks to him that I was able to get through the war [in Paris, during 1940 – 1945 Van Velde had a long and painful break, with only a few paintings he finished]. A true loyal mind without hypocrisy. The most universal spirit. The greatest Frenchman. I have always been much less interested in painters [than Baudelaire - a great surprise to hear for Charles Juliet the interviewer]."

"Of course painting is ridiculous. But it’s the only way I've got to get closer to life."

"An artist’s life is all very fine and moving. But only in retrospect. In books."

"Artists who are the defenders of true life become phonies. That’s the perfidious thing about this world. Society turns anyone with a bit of life inside them into a medical case."

"I don't like talking. I don’t like people talking to me.. .Painting is silence."

"A painter is somebody who sees. I paint the moment when I set out. When I set out to see. And it’s the same thing for the viewer. When he approaches the canvas, he is advancing towards an encounter. The encounter with vision."

"There's a perpetual duel going on between the world of the spirit and the world of things. Although the one only has meaning in relation to the other."

"Most people's lives are governed by willpower. An artist is someone who has no will."

"To be nothing. Just nothing. It’s a frightening experience. You have to let go of everything."