Generally, I am opposed to painting which is concerned with conceptions of simplicity. Everything looks busy to me.
Jasper JohnsI 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.
Jasper JohnsWhen something is new to us, we treat it as an experience. We feel that our senses are awake and clear. We are alive.
Jasper JohnsSometimes I see it and then paint it. Other times I paint it and then see it. Both are impure situations, and I prefer neither. At every point in nature there is something to see. My work contains similar possibilities for the changing focus of the eye.
Jasper Johns