So really what I am trying to do is create and understand form. But then too, color enters into it because a lot of things are color changes without a value change, which wouldn't show up if you were just using a non-color medium.

We... joked a little about presidential portraits. He [Bill Clinton] told me that he and Harrison Ford had been joking recently about how chins drop with age, and he didn't want to look that way.

There are times when I love to play all kinds of complicated games in painting. But this is one case when I need to be fairly straightforward. I'll just try to paint the man, his intelligence, his amiability and his stature, maybe paint him fairly close to humor and try to get it just right.

It's not just a boring exercise in pushing oil paint around a canvas. It's a way of opening a threshold to an exciting new world of vision.

A language not based on universal symbols or sensations is gibberish, a pitfall of modern art, no longer modern.

Dramatic use of color, harmonious design, the interplay of light and shadow across a variety of textures, the portrayal of the figure and other subject matter that reflects the sophistication and beauty I find in nature - all presented from a unique point of view - can only be successfully achieved with a sound command of the painter's craft... history will determine how successful I have been.

I'm drawing in my head pretty much.