If it [talent] isn’t strong enough to take the gaff of real training, then it’s not worth much.

If it [talent] isn’t strong enough to take the gaff of real training, then it’s not worth much.

I can't work completely out of my imagination-I must put my foot in a bit of truth-and then I can fly free.

At 18 I began painting steadily fulltime and at age 20 had my first New York show at the Macbeth Gallery.

I have a good friend, Rudolf Serkin, the pianist, a very sensitive man. I was talking to him one day backstage after a concert and I told him that I thought he had played particularly sensitively that day. I said, "You know, many pianists are brilliant, they strike the keys so well, but somehow you are different." "Ah," he said, "I don't think you should ever strike a key. You should pull the keys with your fingers."

Artists today think of everything they do as a work of art. It is important to forget about what you are doing - then a work of art may happen.

I search for the realness, the real feeling of a subject, all the texture around it... I always want to see the third dimension of something... I want to come alive with the object.