Barbara Hepworth Quotes

I rarely draw what I see. I draw what I feel in my body.

It is easy now to communicate with people through abstraction, and particularly so in sculpture. Since the whole body reacts to its presence, people become themselves a living part of the whole.

The naturalness of life... the sense of community is, I think, a very important factor in an artist's life.

At no point do I wish to be in conflict with any man or masculine thought. It doesn't enter my consciousness. Art is anonymous. It's not competitive with men. It's a complementary contribution.

I am the form and I am the hollow, the thrust and the contour

I found one had to do some work every day, even at midnight, because either you're professional or you're not.

[My works are] an imitation of my own past and present and of my own creative vitality as I experience them in one particular instant of my emotional and imaginative life. . .

Halfway through any work, one is often tempted to go off on a tangent. Once you have yielded, you will be tempted to yield again and again... Finally, you would only produce something hybrid.

My works are an imitation of my own past and present.

I must always have a clear image of the form of a work before I begin. Otherwise there is no impulse to create.

The sculptor must search with passionate intensity for the underlying principle of the organisation of mass and tension - the meaning of gesture and the structure of rhythm.

I love my blocks of marble, always piling up in the yard like a flock of sheep.

My left hand is my thinking hand (image), my right hand my doing hand (sequence).

Body experience... is the centre of creation.

The United Nations is our conscience. If it succeeds it is our success. If it fails it is our failure.

I felt the most intense pleasure in piercing the stone in order to make an abstract form and space; quite a different sensation from that of doing it for the purpose of realism.

I felt the most intense pleasure in piercing the stone in order to make an abstract form and space quite a different sensation from that of doing it for the purpose of realism.