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.

You can’t take yourself too seriously.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Imagination comes of not having things.

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.

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.

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.’