Quotes from Agnes Martin

Artwork is a representation of our devotion to life.

The main thing in making art often is letting go of your expectation and your idea.

One thing I like about Zen. It doesn't believe in achievement.

When you look in your mind you find it covered with a lot of rubbishy thoughts. You have to penetrate these and hear what your mind is telling you to do. Such work is original work.

The value of art is in the observer.

What I say is that we're capable of a transcendent response, and I think it makes us happy. And I do think beauty produces a transcendent response.

Art is the concrete representation of our most subtle feelings.

I don't think the way to succeed is by doing something aggressive. Aggression is weak-minded.

When I first made a grid, I happened to be thinking of the innocence of trees, and then a grid came into my mind and I thought it represented innocence, and I still do, and so I painted it and then I was satisfied. I thought, 'This is my vision.'

It's through discipline and tremendous disappointment and failure that you arrive at what it is you must paint.