A collection makes its own demands. Many artists have been collectors. I think of it rather as an illness. I felt it was using up too much energy.
Howard Hodgkin

A painting is finished when the subject comes back, when what has caused the painting to be made comes back as an object.
Howard Hodgkin

Collecting has been my great extravagance. It's a way of being. I collect for the same reason that I eat too much-I'm one of nature's shoppers.
Howard Hodgkin

I am happy for people to talk about my pictures, but I wish devoutly that I was not expected to talk about them myself.
Howard Hodgkin

I am isolated as an artist, not as a person.
Howard Hodgkin

I don't look at the work of my contemporaries very much; I tend to look at pictures by dead artists. It's much easier to get near their paintings.
Howard Hodgkin

I don't really have a historical overview of my work at all. I'm not an art historian. I don't see that there's this period and that period.
Howard Hodgkin

I don't think you can lightly paint a picture. It's an activity I take very seriously.
Howard Hodgkin

I fell through a crack for years. Historically, I am a nothing because I fit in no category. I can only be me.
Howard Hodgkin

I find old copies of National Gallery catalogues, which are written in the dryest possible prose, infinitely soothing.
Howard Hodgkin


I hate painting.
Howard Hodgkin

I look at my pictures, and I think, 'Well, how did I do that?'
Howard Hodgkin

I once was interviewed and got so exasperated that I said, 'What do you want, a shopping list?' They kept asking, 'What's in this picture?'
Howard Hodgkin

I think that words are often extraneous to what I do.
Howard Hodgkin

I think words come between the spectator and the picture.
Howard Hodgkin

I want my pictures to be things. I want them to be made up of marks that are physically and individually self-sufficient.
Howard Hodgkin

I'm very envious of the few artists who are any good and still do portraits.
Howard Hodgkin

I'm vulnerable to criticism. Any artist is, because you work alone in your studio and, until recently, critics were the only way you'd get any feedback.
Howard Hodgkin

In England, it's thought to be morally suspect to worry about what your surroundings look like.
Howard Hodgkin

In the United States there has been a kind of a structure in the Modern art world. The New York School was nearly a coherent thing-for a minute.
Howard Hodgkin