"I think my work is quite close to the way a poet works. I've always admired T.S. Eliot in particular, because of the way he could create incredible poignant images, stitched together from quite disparate sources. The subtleties or personalities of objects help determine the meaning of the final image, but it's the transformative process that's crucial. A lot of the initial materials or experiences in my work may be quite banal, almost embarrassing to talk about, but it's a questions of 'making it new' as Wyndham Lewis said."

Colin Lanceley

(Studio: Australian painters on the nature of creativity by Ian R. Lloyd (2007))

"If was doing something padded or rhetorical I'd be the first to become aware of it, and I couldn't continue. I think it's extremely important to be self-critical. In fact, I don't believe that any good art is not self-critical.  I don't believe that any good art is not intelligent. The process of making art can be very, very, very, very, very difficult, and unless you bring your life experience to it, you've got nothing. On the other hand, there are those Beethoven moments when you get a wonderful conjunction of themes and variations, and a very satisfying resolution."

Colin Lancelely

(Studio: Australian painters on the nature of creativity by Ian R. Lloyd (2007))

"When I get stuck, I go to the post office, walk the streets, clean brushes, sweep the floor, make a nuisance of myself... Part of problem, for someone of my generation, is to do with life experience and art experience. The more yo know  as an artist, the more you've seen, the harder it is to feel you can tack something fresh onto that huge and endless depth of human knowledge."

Colin Lanceley 

(Studio: Australian painters on the nature of creativity by Ian R. Lloyd (2007))

Since 2005 Lanceley's paintings had revealed a growing translucency of colour, reflecting an artist in full command of his vision, and in his final weeks he declared a hope that something of its essence was still worth exploring: “Cezanne’s paintings inspired Braque and Picasso to go out into the landscape excited by a new language … demonstrating that artists could remake the world in any imagined model, which is the most exciting idea I have ever come across in the visual arts.”

He feels it is important to achieve a state of awareness in which one is sensitive to the ideas that are emerging, chiefly through the process of drawing. Although, on second thoughts, he finds he can barely separate drawing from painting.

John McDonald on Colin Lancely

Studio: Australian painters on the nature of creativity by Ian R. Lloyd (2007) 

Lanceley's work is held by the National Gallery of Australia and most state galleries. Internationally his work is held in public collections in the United States and Europe including the Tate and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Freshness is precisely what Lanceley is always seeking. He admires Matisse, whose paintings look like "angels have breathed them onto the canvas," but recognises those qualities are only achieved "by a lot of forcing and pushing and rubbing out and painting over."

John McDonald on Colin Lancely

Studio: Australian painters on the nature of creativity by Ian R. Lloyd (2007)

In 1994 Lanceley was appointed to the Council of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.

In 1990 Colin Lanceley was awarded the Order of Australia (AO).