The character of the artist doesn't enter into the nature of the art. Eliot said that art is the escape from personality, which I think is right. We know that Velázquez embezzled money from the Spanish court and wanted power and so on, but you can't see this in his art.

My work is purely autobiographical... It is about myself and my surroundings.

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

I would wish my portraits to be of the people, not like them. Not having a look of the sitter, being them.

I could never put anything into a picture that wasn't actually there in front of me. That would be a pointless lie, a mere bit of artfulness.

I have a hatred of habit and routine. And what dogs love is just that. They like regular everything, and I don't have regular anything. I have a timetable, but no routine.

The process of creation becomes necessary to the painter perhaps more than is the picture. The process in fact is habit-forming