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.

Realism has to be such high quality, you can't fake it. It's all hanging out there like the laundry.

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.

If you really want to seriously think about life, and therefore take painting very seriously... and take seriously the joys that it can bring to one, then you want to go to museums. You want to study the great of the past.

If you can see it, and if you know your color, you can paint it.

If I am using a sable, it may start off as an eight or seven, but it's a double aught by the time I'm done. I hate brights... they have no use. You might as well buy a filbert and take the scissors and cut off half of what you paid for.

I think of music a lot when I paint. The theme of it to a degree is music. So instead of literally putting in music or literally putting in a musical instrument, I use only a hint of the instrument, but the brocaded pattern is like a line of Bach because of its order and the leaves going up are like passages from Vivaldi, and the emphasis on drapery is where the sound comes.