You see what you know!

As far as I was concerned, with the early paintings, I liked them, I thought they were pretty good, but I didn't think it was the end of the world. I also thought of it as a kind of structure, a base to build on. So this proves I can do this and that, and they don't collapse, so then what can I do from here? How can I build on it?

You have bits of canvas that are unpainted and you have these thick stretcher bars. So you see that a painting is an object; that it's not a window into something - you're not looking at a landscape, you're not looking at a portrait, but you're looking at a painting. It's basically: A painting is a painting is a painting. And it's what Frank Stella said famously: What you see is what you see.

I want to make exalted art. A successful image has pictorial lift. I am looking for whatever is up there

Architecture can't fully represent the chaos and turmoil that are part of the human personality, but you need to put some of that turmoil into the architecture, or it isn't real.

When I'm painting the picture, I'm really painting a picture. I may have a flat-footed technique, or something like that, but still, to me, the thrill, or the meat of the thing, is the actual painting. I don't get any thrill out of laying it out.

You couldn't forget Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Joan Miro either. And it had to be, you know, at least as good or better.