I made my first trip west of the Hudson and it was a revelation. The naked musculature of the Rockies was overpowering and my painting responded.

- Elaine De Kooning

Inspiration is indispensable to my work, but it is hard to come by. It is there or it is not; it is a gift of the gods.

- Elaine De Kooning

Art has been hijacked by nonartists. It's been taken over by bookkeeping. The whole thing is so corrupt. But I suppose that's okay. For artists, ever…

- Elaine De Kooning

Every artist returns to things. The drawings that you make as a child or as an adolescent and the ideas that you have as a young beginning artist, no…

- Elaine De Kooning

Women can also be creative in total isolation. I know excellent women artists who do original work without any response to speak of. Maybe they are u…

- Elaine De Kooning

For one thing, I want gesture-any kind of gesture, all kinds of gesture-gentle or brutal, joyous or tragic; the gesture of space soaring, sinking, st…

- Elaine De Kooning

I'm more interested in character. Character comes out of the work. Style is applied or imposed on it.

- Elaine De Kooning

Artists are like cockroaches; everything is grist for the mill.

- Elaine De Kooning

A painting to me is primarily a verb, not a noun, an event first and only secondarily an image.

- Elaine De Kooning