I've always wanted to create drama in my pictures, which is why I paint people. It's people who have brought drama to pictures from the beginning. The simplest human gestures tell stories.

The painting is always done very much with [the model's] co-operation. The problem with painting a nude, of course, is that it deepens the transaction. You can scrap a painting of someone's face and it imperils the sitter's self-esteem less than scrapping a painting of the whole naked body.

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

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

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 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.

Everything is autobiographical and everything is a portrait.