I often painted fragments of things because it seemed to make my statement as well as or better than the whole could.

Objective painting is not good painting unless it is good in the abstract sense. A hill or tree cannot make a good painting just because it is a hill or tree. It is lines and colors put together so that they may say something.

I hate flowers - I paint them because they're cheaper than models and they don't move.

I often lay on that bench looking up into the tree, past the trunk and up into the branches. It was particularly fine at night with the stars above the tree.

Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing.

Bement was a very good teacher but he was a very poor painter. I guess he wasn't a painter at all. He had no courage and I believe that to create one's own world in any of the arts takes courage.

I decided that if I could paint that flower in a huge scale, you could not ignore its beauty.