The spirit, like the body, can be strengthened and developed by frequent exercise. Just as the body, if neglected, grows weaker and finally impotent, so the spirit perishes if untended.
Whatever an artist's personal feelings are, as soon as an artist fills a certain area on the canvas or circumscribes it, he becomes historical. He acts from or upon other artists.
With dance and theatre, I think people get very nervous about not knowing the right things. They feel like they've missed something, or that they're not bright enough to watch it. It's not a test.
I've always been just as interested in making people think as I am in making them feel, and one of the things this scientific process allows me to do is make the audience look differently at dance.
I heard someone say that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to get into heaven. I decided to sculpt camels in a needle.
If there's a cat, I obliterate it by putting polka dot stickers on it. I obliterate a horse by putting polka dot stickers on it. And I obliterated myself by putting the same polka dot stickers on myself.
The dominant invades the entire picture, as it were. In this way I seek to individualize the color, because I have come to believe that there is a living world of each color and I express these worlds.
For me, each nuance of a color is in some way an individual, a being who is not only from the same race as the base color, but who definitely possesses a distinct character and personal soul.
I want to make beautiful paintings. But I don't make beautiful paintings by putting beautiful paint on a canvas with a beautiful motif. It just doesn't work. I expect my paintings to be strong and surprising.
It's very intense to go back to the past and revive work that I've already experienced and moved forward from. It's like seeing an old girlfriend - awkward at times, nostalgic at times and downright maddening and embarrassing.
I like to use my hands and make things... It might seem pretty stupid or pointless but that doesn't matter... some of the most interesting work is the stuff that starts like that - out of a raw need for activity.
Sometimes, as I feel a door or an exit point in my work is closing, I'll try to create an opening so as not to stifle the creative process, which I see as a process that's never-ending.
Often I think changes within my work have been seen as sudden changes or sharp changes, but for me they're not that sudden. They have been there in the studio, but not so much in public.
Yes, people do come across the street to say hi, but as they approach and get near, my perception of space begins to dissolve, and a new interest takes over that is primarily emotional, and with it comes a desire to touch, which may be a human intere...
The older painting - well, it does have an effect all at once, I suppose, but it's of a lesser intensity than a lot of the American work in the last ten or fifteen years.
Some people may say my curved panels look like sails. Well, I am a sailor, so I guess I probably do use that metaphor in my work - though not consciously.
A few days of idleness have completely sickened me, and given me what is called the blue-devils so severely, that I feel that the sooner I go to work and drive them off, the better.
I'd been doing projects outdoors for the public. I made pigeons eat geometry by putting bread out in rhomboids and triangles. I don't know if this activity made sense, but the work was available.
At first I had some idea that the absence of color made the work more physical. Early on I was very involved with the notion of the painting as an object and tended to attack that idea from different directions.
When you have an idea for a work and when you've finished your model for it, for the artist it's almost complete, in a way. But then bringing it to the finish is really something you do for the audience. It is always exciting.
The dripping... well, if it happens, it happens; it does not take anything from the work. The dripping just proves that you were not trying to control the work, but the work was developing by itself and if it drips, it's a natural part in the evoluti...
