The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real.

Painting is sometimes like those recipes where you do all manner of elaborate things to a duck, and then end up putting it on one side and only using the skin.

The aura given out by a person or object is as much a part of them as their flesh.

Everything is autobiographical and everything is a portrait.

The painter makes real to others his innermost feelings about all that he cares for. A secret becomes known to everyone who views the picture through the intensity with which it is felt.

I am only interested in painting the actual person, in doing a painting of them, not in using them to some ulterior end of art. For me, to use someone doing something not native to them would be wrong.

The painter's obsession with his subject is all that he needs to drive him to work.