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.

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'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.

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.

Part of what Im about is seeing how I can paint the same thing differently instead of different things the same way.

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.