overlapping work and life (19 July 2016)

Edgar Degas, Rehearsal, 1879


You must aim high, not in what you are going to do at some future date, but in what you are going to make yourself do to-day. Otherwise, working is just a waste of time.

- Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas, Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando, 1879


Conversation in real life is full of half-finished sentences and overlapping talk. Why shouldn't painting be too?

- Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas, Dancer, 1874



Make a drawing, begin it again, trace it; begin it again and trace it again.

- Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas, Seated Dancer ca. 1871, oil paint thinned with turpentine over pencil, on pink paper


Damn, and just when I was starting to get it!

- Edgar Degas (on his deathbed)

Edgar Degas, At the Milliner's, 1905-1910

Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet Standing, 1866-1868