Notion d'artiste — Marlene DUMAS

"At my art school, I remember, my professor told me, 'You are a born painter'. I replied that I considered painting old-fashioned. All the smart artists were doing other kind of work, so I wanted to do something else, but he said, 'My poor girl, what else could you do?' In Holland, I will never be accepted as  proper Duch person because I can't ride a bicycle, or swim, and I don't have any hobbies. In that sense I enjoy seeing art as a form of play — you can play, you can lie, you can do all kinds of things." — Marlene DUMAS

"Barbara BLOOM in conversation with Marlene DUMAS", Marlene Dumas, Phaidon, London, 1999, p15