Jenny Saville Quotes on Art

Jenny Saville is a popular contemporary British painter and was part of the YBO or Young British Artists group. She’s known for her very large and confronting images of the female nude. Saville’s paintings have sold at auction for more than ten million dollars, making her one of the highest selling woman artists alive. She produces paintings, drawings, and photographs. Famous Jenny Saville paintings include “Propped”, “Ruben’s Flap”, “Fulcrum”, “Juncture”, “Torso II”, “Shadow Head”, and “Reflective Flesh”.

Mini biography: Born Jennifer Anne Saville on the 7th of May, 1970 in Cambridge, England, United Kingdom of Great Britain. Jenny Saville lives and works in England.

Famous Jenny Saville Art Quotes

I do hope I play out the contradictions that I feel, all the anxieties and dilemmas. If they’re there in the work, then that’s brilliant. Jenny Saville

Painting is my natural language. I feel in my own universe when I’m painting. Jenny Saville

De Kooning is my main man, really, because he just did everything you can do with paint. He reversed it, dripped it, scraped it. But I want to hold on to a certain amount of reality. Jenny Saville

It is odd to be showing in Britain. I’ve been shown a lot in America; that’s my favorite place to show. We’re quite conceptually driven in Britain. There’s less guilt about being a painter over there. Jenny Saville

I get to a point when I can’t look at any other contemporary art.. Because if I look at anything else, it gives me other options.. I think I can’t have any other options because this is it, this is where I’m at. Jenny Saville

I like all the bits up to hanging a show, and then I disengage. I don’t even know my own collectors. All the razzmatazz: the market, the auctions. I’m quite immune to it. I know it’s part of the process. But when you get in the studio, none of that will help you to make a better painting. Jenny Saville

I mostly see failings in the work – which is normal, isn’t it? Jenny Saville

Painting on the floor is good because it takes away your conventional skill and ability to see. The material itself is playing with gravity and I make marks and merge paint with a certain energy. It’s like a way to trap nature; to hold on to a sense of time. Jenny Saville

I want people to know what it is they’re looking at. But at the same time, the closer they get to the painting, it’s like going back into childhood. And it’s like an abstract piece.. it becomes the landscape of the brush marks rather than just sort of an intellectual landscape. Jenny Saville

Picasso wouldn’t be Picasso without his academic training. That’s why he nails it. The wildest distortions stand up, even if they’re crazy. The point is that destruction is fundamental to the process; without it, you never get anywhere interesting. But fundamental to that is knowing what you can excavate from the destruction. Jenny Saville

I like working. My friends get pissed off. I cancel dinner dates and all that kind of stuff because I like being in my studio. Jenny Saville

Rembrandt is part of a group of artists who never go away. It’s like seeing a Francis Bacon exhibition: it just blows you away. Certain artists really hit—they don’t go in and out of fashion. Jenny Saville

The older you get, the more doubtful you become, though I mean that in a good way. It’s like being an athlete. You get quite fit on your toes when you’re really pushing. But then you finish a piece, and you have to start all over again. Jenny Saville

I paint flesh because I’m human. If you work in oil, as I do, it comes naturally. Flesh is just the most beautiful thing to paint. Jenny Saville

I’m sort of impressed that I once had that sort of energy. The drive I must have had. I can’t believe I was only 21. That’s so young, and yet I was so determinedly serious about making art. Jenny Saville

I like making work in my studio day in and day out, but I’m not so interested in the business side. Jenny Saville

I’m not anti conceptual art. I don’t think painting must be revived, exactly. Art reflects life, and our lives are full of algorithms, so a lot of people are going to want to make art that’s like an algorithm. But my language is painting, and painting is the opposite of that. There’s something primal about it. It’s innate, the need to make marks. That’s why, when you’re a child, you scribble. Jenny Saville

I used only to work on one piece at a time, and that’s where the trauma came. Now I move between paintings. When I start getting a bit dogmatic, I switch. Jenny Saville

Jenny Saville Self-Portrait Painting

More on British Artist Jenny Saville

How has Jenny Saville influenced your art making? Is she the greatest woman artist working today? Let us know what you think about Jenny Saville in the comments below.

For more on the famous British artist here’s three excellent Jenny Saville books: “Jenny Saville Monograph“, “Jenny Saville Oxyrhynchus“, and “The Figure: Painting, Drawing, and Sculpture“.

Related or similar popular artists and celebrities include: David Hockney, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and other Famous British Artists.