Martin Puryear Quotes

#1. There remains this belief that the work itself can have an identity that can speak, whether it's through beauty, or through ugliness, or whatever quality you put into the work. The work doesn't have to be a transparent vehicle for you to say things about life today.

Martin Puryear

#2. There is the potential for much more spontaneity with prints than there is with the sculpture, which tends to be very slow, accretive kind of process-labor intensive.

Martin Puryear

#3. Although idea and form are ultimately paramount in my work, so too are chance, accident, and rawness.

Martin Puryear

#4. I realized it wasn't necessary to work in the traditional methods of carving and casting.

Martin Puryear

#5. The site I landed on feels much more isolated than it really is; it's almost magical. Within its limited radius, there was a whole range of the local ecology.

Martin Puryear

#6. The fire was followed by a period of grieving and then by an incredible lightness, freedom, and mobility.

Martin Puryear

#7. I think of moving as a kind of saving grace.

Martin Puryear

#8. I was never interested in making cool, distilled, pure objects.

Martin Puryear

#9. I felt it was part of the spirit of the whole program to do more than simply make an object.

Martin Puryear

#10. The work is flowing from an inner knowing of how things really are.

Martin Puryear

#11. I'm interested in vernacular cultures, where people lived a little closer to the source of materials and the making of objects for use. And for me, not to rely strictly on the history of art has always been an interesting process, to be looking into areas that we call craft and trades.

Martin Puryear

#12. When I went to Africa I think that was when I really found a way to deal with what I had recently discovered; in two-dimensional terms, at least.

Martin Puryear

#13. At a certain point, I just put the building and the art impulse together. I decided that building was a legitimate way to make sculpture.

Martin Puryear