LeRoy Neiman Quotes

• You know what I like about San Francisco? The women are beautiful, fashionable and smart. San Francisco is one of the only cities I like to visit. I love New York and Chicago – I studied there, and L.A. has the same people as New York.

  LeRoy Neiman

  Topics in Uncategorized

• You can’t take yourself too seriously.

  LeRoy Neiman

  Topics in Uncategorized

• When I paint, I seriously consider the public presence of a person – the surface facade. I am less concerned with how people look when they wake up or how they act at home. A person’s public presence reflects his own efforts at image development.

  LeRoy Neiman

  Topics in Uncategorized

• There’s no greatest moment in the arts. It’s a life, it’s a continuity thing. You can’t have a great moment because it’s spiritual. It’s a belief, it’s a calling. If you’re an artist, doing your own thing on your own, it’s while you’re doing it that counts. It’s a process. If you get too elated, you can get too depressed.

  LeRoy Neiman

  Topics in Uncategorized

• The people who love my paintings, that respond to them the most, they’re spectators, they’re not viewers.

  LeRoy Neiman

  Topics in Uncategorized

• The most important thing is to just do it. If I work at a higher level I have responsibility to do better than what I’ve done before. Sometimes the best happens – beyond possibility. Just do it. Can’t worry about it.

  LeRoy Neiman

  Topics in Uncategorized

• The businessman says ‘If I don’t do it first, somebody else will.’ The artist says ‘If I don’t do it first, nobody else will.’

  LeRoy Neiman

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Businessman, Artist

• ‘Playboy’ made the good life a reality for me and made it the subject matter of my paintings – not affluence and luxury as such, but joie de vivre itself.

  LeRoy Neiman

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Paintings, Affluence

• Some people try to paint in my style. Some simply sell pirated copies of my work. Some claim to be my publisher or agent or even my exclusive representative, when they are not.

  LeRoy Neiman

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Agent, Publishers

• The big shock of my life was Abstract Expressionism – Pollock, de Kooning, those guys. It changed my work. I was an academically trained student, and suddenly you could pour paint, smear it on, broom it on!

  LeRoy Neiman

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Pour

• No, I never had any dreams. The process of art is a dream in itself. The artist just doesn’t… you work out something. It’s yours. You don’t have to go to sleep to do that. You do that on the canvas.

  LeRoy Neiman

  Topics in Uncategorized

• My lovely wife Janet has been in a few paintings. She is basically a reserved woman who has never sought the limelight. She has always been there throughout my career and continues to be at my side.

  LeRoy Neiman

  Topics in Uncategorized

• It’s not the act of arrogance to draw, it’s humbling – you must use your God-given talent. And of all the people I sketch, in most cases I feel I have to measure up to the subject.

  LeRoy Neiman

  Topics in Uncategorized

• It’s been fun. I’ve had a lucky life. Art has made me pull the best out of myself.

  LeRoy Neiman

  Topics in Uncategorized

• It’s a nice feeling to go out in the world and look for excellence – the best in man. My subject is very valid. It’s about people, and about life.

  LeRoy Neiman

  Topics in Uncategorized

• It has been difficult to hold onto many paintings but I have retained a few. Possibly the current favorite is titled ‘Big Band’ completed in 2005. It measures 13 feet x 9 feet. It has 18 nearly life size recognizable portraits of the biggest jazz stars that I knew and saw perform in the 1950s, ’60s, ’70s, ’80s and includes Wynton Marsalis.

  LeRoy Neiman

  Topics in Uncategorized

• Imagination comes of not having things.

  LeRoy Neiman

  Topics in Uncategorized

• I’ve zeroed in on what you would call action and excellence… Everybody who does anything to try to succeed has to give the best of themselves, and art has made me pull the best out of myself.

  LeRoy Neiman

  Topics in Uncategorized

• I’ve met and sketched most of the great athletes from the past five decades and their movement, grace and energy have kept me captivated over the years. That’s what the ancient Greeks first saw and that’s what caught my interest.

  LeRoy Neiman

  Topics in Uncategorized

• I’ve got the public. I don’t care about the critics. I did at one time. I don’t any more. I did when I needed compliments. But if you get a lot of compliments, you don’t need a critic to tell you, ‘This should be done another way.’

  LeRoy Neiman

  Topics in Uncategorized

LeRoy Neiman (35)

Birth:	8th June, 1921
Death:	20th June, 2012
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Artist, Painter

Related Authors

• Ernest Thompson Seton
• Mort Walker
• Zion & Lennox
• Audrey Niffenegger
• Katsura Hoshino
• Alice Abrams
• Hiro Mashima
• Paul Cézanne
• Laurence Binyon
• John Hejduk

Advertisement

Today's Anniversary - 21st January

Births

• 1824 - Stonewall Jackson
• 1938 - Wolfman Jack
• 1962 - Marie Trintignant
• 1950 - Robert Luskin
• 1941 - Placido Domingo

Deaths

• 1932 - Lytton Strachey
• 2008 - Evan G. Galbraith
• 1997 - Colonel Tom Parker
• 1924 - Vladimir Lenin
• 1870 - Alexander Herzen