If you know what you're doing, you're doing dull stuff.

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.

What makes everything one is the style.

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

A New York audience generally likes decorative paintings, and decorative paintings go with the couch. If you change the couch, you change the painting. And when you're coming up, and the paintings aren't first-class decoration, you're at a disadvantage for publicity and sales.

You have to find what your temperament is like and live around it. I find I work really well off the top of my head because you get the unconscious into it. Otherwise, it's just an idea. And I'm not so hot there.

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.