The local painters were my idols...These artists, too, were grown-ups, but they were grown-ups who could still see! Their eye was still in love! Like mine!

It is in order to really see, to see ever deeper, ever more intensely, hence to be fully aware and alive, that I draw what the Chinese call 'The Ten Thousand Things' around me. Drawing is the discipline by which I constantly rediscover the world. I have learned that what I have not drawn, I have never really seen, and that when I start drawing an ordinary thing, I realize how extraordinary it is, sheer miracle.

Art is neither a profession nor a hobby. Art is a way of being.

The local painters were my idols...These artists, too, were grown-ups, but they were grown-ups who could still see! Their eye was still in love! Like mine!

I have learned that what I have not drawn, I have never really seen

Drawing is the discipline by which I constantly rediscover the world.

I have learned that what I have not drawn I have never really seen, and that when I start drawing an ordinary thing, I realize how extraordinary it is, sheer miracle.