Most important, for openers, work six hours a day, seven days a week for six years. Then if you like it you can get serious about it.

Paint faster than you can think.

I like to make an image that is so simple you can't avoid it, and so complicated you can't figure it out.

You have to be a little scared of what you're doing. Otherwise, you just paint the same masterpiece a little worse.

If you're going to go for 'it' you have a common thing you share with other artists; that's desperation. You jump out a window style-wise. Try to put it together before you hit the ground.

The abstract expressionists had that thing of, subject matter becomes content, content becomes form. And I always thought there was no room for style. I felt with my painting, the style really is the content. The style holds everything together.

Realist painting has to do with leaving out a lot of detail. I think my painting can be a little shocking in all that it leaves out. But what happens is that the mind fills in what's missing . . . Painting is a way of making you see what I saw.