I always feel the desire to look for the extraordinary in ordinary things; to suggest, not to impose, to leave always a slight touch of mystery in my paintings.
The craft of painting has virtually disappeared. There is hardly anyone left who really possesses it. For evidence one has only to look at the painters of this century.
As far as modern writing is concerned, it is rarely rewarding to translate it, although it might be easy. Translation is very much like copying paintings.
I'm not the kind of artist who has an idea and then carries it out; it's more like I find what the idea was through doing the paintings.
I don't want the viewer to be able to peel away the layers of my painting like the layers of an onion and find that all the blues are on the same level.
I would have rebelled against parental authority, no matter what. When I was 15, I started painting my face and making my own clothes.
I don't very much enjoy looking at paintings in general. I know too much about them. I take them apart.
I'm still very sure that painting is one of the most basic human capacities, like dancing and singing, that make sense, that stay with us, as something human.
I don't think I can do this - painting under observation. It's the worst thing there is, worse than being in the hospital.
If you were to say to me that I couldn't paint, I would write. If I couldn't write, I would be a set designer. As long as I'm creating something, I'm happy.
We would sift through every inch of what it was that worked, or if it didn't, and wonder what was effective in it, in terms of paint, the subject matter, the size, the drawing.
I feel the need of attaining the maximum of intensity with the minimum of means. It is this which has led me to give my painting a character of even greater bareness.
Living is art. Breathing and heart beating is music. Seeing is painting the world with our eyes. Touching is sculpting the shape of everything. Life is the most intense art of all.
It doesn't make much difference how the paint is put on as long as something has been said. Technique is just a means of arriving at a statement.
We have been tarnished by the views of generations, painted on with society's standards, but if we wipe away the dust, and polish the heart within, you will discover that the surface underneath is lustrous.
I believe, even when I'm doing my standup or my acting or whatever I'm doing, I believe in painting pictures.
I rage against Vincent van Gogh for needing to die at 37, after painting for only ten years.
Giorgio Morandi's paintings make me think that artists may not totally choose, or even control, their subjects or style.
Sometimes I just want to paint the words "It's my fault" across my forehead to save people the time of being pissed off at me.
Franz Kline, who became known for his black and white paintings, did a whole series of gorgeous landscapes and wonderful portraits that may still hang in Greenwich Village.
Please DO waste art materials. Use paper. Empty paint jars. Deplete pens. if it's teaching you stuff, it's not being wasted.
