I think that one wants from a painting a sense of life. The final suggestion, the final statement, has to be not a deliberate statement but a helpless statement. It has to be what you can't avoid saying.

There was very little art in my childhood. I was raised in South Carolina; I wasn't aware of any art in South Carolina. There was a minor museum in Charleston, which had nothing of interest in it. It showed local artists, paintings of birds.

Early on I was very involved with the notion of the painting as an object and tended to attack that idea from different directions.

To be an artist you have to give up everything, including the desire to be a good artist.

I think a painting should include more experience than simply intended statement.

I have no ideas about what the paintings imply about the world. I don't think that's a painter's business. He just paints paintings without a conscious reason.

Take an object. Do something to it. Do something else to it.