I can paint and draw. I believe this myself and a few other people say that they believe this too. But I'm not certain of whether it's true.
I look out the window sometimes to seek the color of the shadows and the different greens in the trees, but when I get ready to paint I just close my eyes and imagine a scene.
Singing has always seemed to me the most perfect means of expression. It is so spontaneous. And after singing, I think the violin. Since I cannot sing, I paint.
And when Roger talks about the frightened ones running away from the bombs, I immediately thought of my days when I was young and I had to wear these gas masks.
You have to know how to use the accident, how to recognise it, how to control it, and ways to eliminate it so that the whole surface looks felt and born all at once.
I came here as a man of visions. I was sent here as a man of visions, like a second Noah. I'm not a Noah but I'm here as a second Noah. I'm here as a red light is in the street.
A collection makes its own demands. Many artists have been collectors. I think of it rather as an illness. I felt it was using up too much energy.
I am happy for people to talk about my pictures, but I wish devoutly that I was not expected to talk about them myself.
There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted.
I have always tried to hide my efforts and wished my works to have a light joyousness of springtime which never lets anyone suspect the labors it has cost me.
My characters have undergone the same process of simplification as the colors. Now that they have been simplified, they appear more human and alive than if they had been represented in all their details.
It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess. Otherwise there is pure harmony, an easy give and take, and the painting comes out well.
Abstract painting is abstract. It confronts you. There was a reviewer a while back who wrote that my pictures didn't have any beginning or any end. He didn't mean it as a compliment, but it was.
Invention, strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of those images which have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory; nothing can come of nothing.
I used to kind of go for it, right? Like, I'd be the one who would say, 'All right, there's Kate Moss. I'm going to try to make out with her.'
My style is difficult to contain in a sentence; it's ever evolving. Generally I'm drawn to clean cuts and avoid patterns. I tend to choose structure and block colors, but these are all just loose guidelines.
From 1989 to 2000, I was focusing in on my children. I hadn't realized the world had changed a lot. AIDS had happened, for starters, and so many people in the arts died or were affected.
Part of being a conscious human being, is having an intention. And if you put an intention into whatever you do, it’s definitely going to be more satisfying in the end
Most people live in the city and go to the country at the weekend, and that's posh and aristocratic, but actually to live in the country and come to London when you can't take it any more is different.
I think I've always been afraid of painting, really. Right from the beginning. All my paintings are about painting without a painter. Like a kind of mechanical form of painting.
I've had laser eye surgery and I don't wear glasses any more, so people just go, 'You're not Damien Hirst.' I don't get recognized on the street.
