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.

If you clean it up, get analytical, all the subtle joy and emotion you felt in the first place goes flying out the window.

I do an awful lot of thinking and dreaming about things in the past and the future - the timelessness of the rocks and the hills - all the people who have existed there.

To have all your life's work and to have them along the wall, it's like walking in with no clothes on. It's terrible.

If somehow I can, before I leave this earth, combine my absolutely mad freedom and excitement with truth, then I will have done something.

I've tried never to be easily satisfied, and I've been painting like fury now for forty years.... I have a feeling. You paint about as far as your emotions go, and that's about it.

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