“When I first made a grid I happened to be thinking of the innocence of trees and then this 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.”
interview by Suzan Campbell, May 15, 1989; transcript in 'Archives of American Art', The Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
One of her first grid paintings she made in New York in 1964, it was [ https://www.moma.org/collection/works/78361 titled 'The Tree']. Martin often described this painting as her first grid. In fact, she had been making them since at least the beginning of 1960's
1980 - 2000
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Agnes Martin 48
American artist 1912–2004Related quotes

Interview with Clara T. MacChesney (1912), in Matisse on Art (1995) edited by Jack D. Flam, p. 66
1910s

“They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn't. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.”
Quoted in Time Magazine, "Mexican Autobiography" (27 April 1953)
1946 - 1953
Variant: I don't paint dreams or nightmares, I paint my own reality.

“The thought that I might kill myself formed in my mind coolly as a tree or a flower.”

“Dreyfus is innocent. I swear it! I stake my life on it — my honor!”
Appeal for Dreyfus delivered at his trial for libel (22 February 1898).
Context: Dreyfus is innocent. I swear it! I stake my life on it — my honor! At this solemn moment, in the presence of this tribunal which is the representative of human justice, before you, gentlemen of the jury, who are the very incarnation of the country, before the whole of France, before the whole world, I swear that Dreyfus is innocent. By my forty years of work, by the authority that this toil may have given me, I swear that Dreyfus is innocent. By all I have now, by the name I have made for myself, by my works which have helped for the expansion of French literature, I swear that Dreyfus is innocent. May all that melt away, may my works perish if Dreyfus be not innocent! He is innocent. All seems against me — the two Chambers, the civil authority, the military authority, the most widely-circulated journals, the public opinion which they have poisoned. And I have for me only an ideal of truth and justice. But I am quite calm; I shall conquer. I was determined that my country should not remain the victim of lies and injustice. I may be condemned here. The day will come when France will thank me for having helped to save her honor.

David Cronenberg's Body Language http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/18/magazine/18cronenberg.html?pagewanted=all (September 18, 2005)


“I never thought before my death to see
Youth's vision thus made perfect.”
Source: Epipsychidion (1821), l. 41