Agnes Martin

“The best things in life are really inappropriate.”

“Happiness is the goal. And the way to happiness is to respond to life.”

“My paintings are about merging, about formlessness... a world without objects, without interruption.”

“A definition of art is that it makes concrete our most subtle emotions.”

“I paint with my back to the world.”

“I hope I have made it clear that the work is about perfection as we are aware of it in our minds but that the paintings are very far from being perfect.”

“My paintings are not about what is seen. They are about what is known forever in the mind.”

“Beauty is the mystery of life. It is not in the eye, it is in the mind.”

“Art is the concrete representation of our most subtle feelings.”

“An artist's life is a life of dedication.”

“It's not about facts, it's about feelings. It's about what you feel in your heart.”

“From music people accept pure emotion, but from art they demand explanation.”

“That's the way to live—with a helpless commitment to what you see and what you feel.”

“The worst thing you can do is to think about yourself. When you're in the studio, you're not a person, you're a force.”

“The value of art is in the observer.”

“When I think of art I think of beauty. Beauty is the mystery of life... In our minds there is awareness of perfection.”

“To be an artist is to believe in life.”

“We are in the midst of reality, and we can't see it.”