I consider myself lucky to have had wonderful teachers. They expose you to a lot and basically teach you how to paint. I think of my career as a series of lucky incidents.

I think abstraction is a very rich area. And it is upsetting that people seem to have some fear of it. I'm constantly making these statements about how you should just look at it and react to it on your own; just relax and let go.

I'm a professional artist, that's how I make my living. So I watch the market. There is, it seems to me, a lot of pure financial speculation, and I don't think that's terribly healthy. Though as long as the money is getting back to the artist, I think that's good. I'm very happy younger artists can make money faster than we could. And we were making it faster than a generation before us.

You can't say I'm going to become a painter in the same way you say I'm going to become a dentist. Or maybe you can nowadays. But it's an endeavor.

I respect all artists, just some more than the others. Because it's something that really needs to be done.

These days people believe they can go into art and make a living. We didn't have that. The abstract expressionists were older, by the time they even got a show. Now people come right out of school and sell.

In this kind of super-capitalistic society, everything is turned into money. And one of the great things about art is it isn't worth anything. It's absolutely free. It's going to get made no matter what.