I begin painting and as I paint the picture begins to assert itself, or suggest itself, under my brush. The form becomes a sign for a woman or a bird as I work... The first stage is free, unconscious... the second stage is carefully calculated.

For me an object is something living. This cigarette or this box of matches contains a secret life much more intense than that of certain human beings.

The spectacle of the sky overwhelms me. Im overwhelmed when I see, in an immense sky, the crescent of the moon, or the sun. There, in my pictures, tiny forms in huge empty spaces. Empty spaces, empty horizons, empty plains - everything which is bare has always greatly impressed me.

What I am looking for... is an immobile movement, something which would be the equivalent of what is called the eloquence of silence, or what St. John of the Cross, I think it was, described with the term 'mute music'.

The painting rises from the brushstrokes as a poem rises from the words. The meaning comes later.

To gain freedom is to gain simplicity.

I try to apply colors like words that shape poems, like notes that shape music.