Barbara Hepworth

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

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

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

“One must be entirely sensitive to the structure of the material that one is handling. One must yield to it in tiny details of execution, perhaps the handling of the surface or grain, and one must master it as a whole.”

“Body experience... is the centre of creation.”

“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.”

“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.”