I don't start a piece knowing exactly what effect it's going to have. There is a seed of an idea that I could never articulate, right at the beginning of the piece, literally like one cell.
We could ask artists from abroad to come in too, so that there could be a mixing and matching of skills from Europe, America and here which would widen our world.
One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul and yet no one ever came to sit by it. Passers-by see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on their way.
I hope to depart in no other way than looking back with love and wistfulness and thinking, oh paintings that I would have made..
How rich art is; if one can only remember what one has seen, one is never without food for thought or truly lonely, never alone.
There is but one Paris and however hard living may be here, and if it became worse and harder even—the French air clears up the brain and does good—a world of good.
Gramacho is the last landfill that allows people in. Brazil is the leading nation in recycling due to its poverty. There are people there surviving from what they find in the garbage.
Humanity is mediocre. The majority of women are neither superior nor inferior to the majority of men. They are all equal. They all merit the same scorn.
You can always draw as well as you know how to. I flatter myself that I feel more than I express on canvas; but I know that is not so.
I don't like persuaded sitters. I never could paint a cat if the cat had any scruples, religious, superstitious, or otherwise, about sitting.
How are things visible? Can you see an egg against a white background? Not by drawing a line around it can you make it evident.
Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul.
As a kid, I lived in a fantasy world. I used to believe ants could talk. Not once did they say thank you.
It takes between three and six hours to make each snowball, depending on snow quality. Wet snow is quick to work with but also quick to thaw, which can lead to a tense journey to the cold store.
Halfway through any work, one is often tempted to go off on a tangent. Once you have yielded, you will be tempted to yield again and again... Finally, you would only produce something hybrid.
Look, we're all saddled with things that make us better or worse. This world is a crazy place, and I've chosen to make my work about that insanity.
I want people to be drawn into the space of the work. And a lot of people are like me in that they have relatively short attention spans. So I shoot for the window of opportunity.
As a painter today you have to work without that essential platform. But if one does not deceive oneself and accepts this lack of certainty, other things may come into play.
You can't do a machine without knowing something about how it's going to work. As for the romantics, the costumes bored me and I don't enjoy doing period clothes.
A lot of my work is about what's abstract and what's pictorial. Is it bubblegum, or is it an abstract painting using bubblegum? The energy comes from walking that line and watching things dip this way and that.
People always say that my work is sensational or shocking but there are truly shocking things you could do, and my sculptures don't go anywhere near that.
