I do not repudiate any of my paintings but there isn't one of them that I would not redo differently, if I had it to redo. My destination is always the same but I work out a different route to get there.
The majority of my work is from life. I spend most fine days from May to October painting outside.
Great paintings have gradations, large and small. . . They serve to lift the subject off the two-dimensionality of the canvas. Gradations are an essential abstract convention.
Monet's work would have been even greater if he had not abandoned figure-painting.
As an actor in the classroom, you're revealing so much, and teachers are, you know, they're just critiquing like a painting or a piece of work; it's like, it's you, and it's your emotions that they're working with.
Painting picture by picture, I followed the impressions my eye took in at heightened moments. I painted only memories, adding nothing, no details that I did not see. Hence the simplicity of the paintings, their emptiness.
Painting is a duality and abstract painting is an entirely aesthetic thing. It always remains on one level. It is only really interesting in the beauty of its patterns or its shapes.
I'm not interested in painting; I'm not interested in making a picture. Then what the hell am I interested in? I must be interested in this process.
It's more this instinct to get in trouble, and then get myself out of trouble. That's what painting is for me.
What do I ask of a painting? I ask it to astonish, disturb, seduce, convince.
I think that in the last twenty years or so, there's been a new kind of honesty in painting where painters have been very proud of paint and have let it behave openly.
The final test of a painting, theirs, mine, any other, is: do the painter's emotions come across?
I was very interested in being a painter. I had facility, I had talent, and I loved painting and printmaking, and I was quite serious about it.
No, the thing to do is try to make a painting that will be alive in your own lifetime.
I think we all go through times in our lives when we decide, "I'm going to try something else. " I tried filmmaking instead of painting, and I think I enjoyed it more. So I don't paint anymore.
A sad fact of life lately at the Museum of Modern Art is that when it comes to group shows of contemporary painting from the collection, the bar has been set pretty low.
Doubt is a central factor all the time. There's always the doubt: What the hell am I doing out here in the middle of the woods, all alone, painting?
Painting isn't just pretty or pleasant; it is something that helps you to stand alone and face yourself.
I had a visit from an artist friend who basically said, "Your paintings are wonderful. Now stop. " It did resonate with me. It hit on the percolating need for change that was already there. I got a little push. I did a group of the paintings early on that were among the best. It was sort of beginner's luck with these.
It is important that the painting can be inhabited, so that the mind's eye, or the eye's mind, can move about it credibly.