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

Actually, you want to go into an area where you're frightened. Otherwise, you're just going to be repainting beautiful paintings, but a little duller each time.

Paint faster than you can think.

You usually want to get something out of a painting other than the ideas that you had in your head.

Most contemporary artists are behind the bubble in time. They're making videos that are so incredibly boring compared to a good movie. Or they're making work where I say, "You realize minimal art is 50 or 60 years old?" That's what I tell people to shock them. They just blanch.

Sometimes it takes me days or weeks to get something clear in my head on what I want to do. Everything is in steps. One thing leads to another.

Picasso and Matisse were the guys I wanted to get away from, and cubism is all still lifes. Their paintings are all closed drawings. And still life is a perfect form for that. By the mid-'50s, I sort of dropped the still life. The large picture was a way of getting around them, too. The abstract expressionists were also into the large form because it was a way of getting around Matisse and Picasso. Picasso can't paint big paintings. Matisse didn't bother after a certain point.