Agnes Martin

“I paint with my back to the world.”

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

“The best things in life are really inappropriate.”

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

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“The value of art is in the observer.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

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