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.

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.

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.

What makes everything one is the style.

My mother thought I would have a hard life as a painter. My father thought the highest thing a person could be was an architect. Below that was a painter. So he thought it was much better than being, say, a doctor.

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.

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