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.

I use the iPhone now for information. But with selfies, I don't know what those people are doing. It's like they believe what they see is real, even with the [filters]. And God bless them! But to me, it's not a self-portrait, it's a reality project.

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.

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

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.

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

Make a painting you can work on for a long period, and make it look like it doesn't show any effort.