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."

My aim is to escape from the medium with which I work.

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

To be interested solely in technique would be a very superficial thing to me.

I think one's art goes as far and as deep as one's love goes. I see no reason for painting but that. If I have anything to offer, it is my emotional contact with the place where I live and the people I do.

I wanted to get it all down, maybe out of my system. I wanted to be able to say, Everything's possible-if you believe and can get excited.

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