Patrick Swift

"Art, if it is successful in the task of questioning reality, if it is good painting and not merely a performance of dexterity, will be an affirmation of God."

"All art is probably erotic in its ultimate character, but painting more than anything else is a purely nervous erotic activity."

"Art on the other hand speaks to us of resignation and rejoicing in reality, and does so through a transformation of our experience of the world into an order wherein all facts become joyous; the more …"

"There are ambiguities in the art of painting but they are the ambiguities of a fine precision: the discovered fact of the image containing at the same time the reverberations of the unknown, the truly…"

"Its life depends on the degree to which it is inhabited by mystery, speaks to us of the unknown."

"The painter celebrates life where he finds it. His morality is the morality of enjoyment, of the continuous development of his own taste without shame or fear. It is a sort of heroism."

"Technical criticism in particular is the despair of the artist. No one but an idiot would offer a poet his comments in terms of spondees and trochees; why must the painter daily suffer the indignity? …"

"A situation has occurred wherein a premium is put on any work qualifying for the term "progressive"… The idea of progress in the arts; the notion that we move forward from one good thing to another in…"