Mark Tobey - Quotes

Quotes

• Looking at Willis's collection of ethnic textiles, Tobey said:

"A painting should be a textile, a texture. That's enough! Perhaps I was influenced by my mother. She used to sew and sew. I can still see that needle going. Maybe that's what I'd rather do than anything with the brush-like stitching over and over and over, laying it in, going over, bringing it up. Bringing it up. That's what is difficult."

• Speaking of the trip to China and Japan that preceded his breakthrough:.

"It's been said I was searching for new techniques; nothing of the sort. I was really enjoying myself, learning to do things that interested me. When I returned to England, I was disturbed. I began to daub on a canvas and I was puzzled by the result -- a few streaks of white, some blue streaks -- looked like a distorted nest. It bothered me. What I had learned in the Orient had affected me more than I realized. This was a new approach. I couldn't shake it off. So I had to absorb it before it consumed me. In a short time white writing emerged. I had a totally new conception of painting. The Orient has been the greatest influence of my life."

• One of Tobey’s students in Seattle was Windsor Utley, who maintained a friendship with Tobey throughout the 1950s. Tobey wrote to Utley:

"I really am sick of modern art really - it’s small pickins now. The best work seems to have been done in the early decades of the 20th century."

• The significance of Tobey’s religious beliefs in relation to his art is something that Tobey himself acknowledged on many occasions, including in 1934 when he wrote:

"The root of all religions, from the Baha’i point of view, is based on the theory that man will gradually come to understand the unity of the world and the oneness of mankind. It teaches that all the prophets are one - that science and religion are the two great powers which must be balanced if man is to become mature. I feel my work has been influenced by these beliefs. I've tried to decentralize and interpenetrate so that all parts of a painting are of related value... Mine are the Orient, the Occident, science, religion, cities, space, and writing a picture."