There's something peculiar about artists. They have ups and downs... After a while everything you do is just wonderful... then you slide back. If you're a good artist you're going to go down. And then it's up to you.

You have to give in to what the paint says... You have to do what it's telling you to do.

No one escapes that moment of innocence when the world attacks him and installs within him the spirit of opposites... As long as everything within you is saying yes and no, dark and light, with big earth-shaking ideas, you come nowhere near art, I think. Light and dark don't exist for us as artists. Light is something given to you and you're allowing it to pass through.

It was told in the Bible. A man fell. He bit into knowledge and fell... How do you fall without falling completely? What do you bring as knowledge to a blank canvas? How do you begin?

There is some other form that you contain within yourself that is not will or purpose and, when applied to art, serves you best. If you systematically apply to the art that you create the aggression of the world that turned you towards art in the first place; if you, in turn, become the aggressor towards your canvas, the thing that you're doing; if you, in turn, work your will upon this thing that you want - you will then cause a dissatisfaction in this life that you create.

When you don't know how to pick up a brush, you don't know anything; at that moment you're an artist. I'll simply say, 'If you know less, you're better off as an artist.

Nothing in the world excites the culture today so much as a question. A question seems very appropriate to whatever you have in mind. Allowing your work to remain questionable is a way of satisfying your cultural condition.