Photographs and reality are just night and day. In reality, the information is all there. A photograph is just kind of a hint.

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.

My career doesn't depend on painting Bill Clinton.

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.

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

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

I'm drawing in my head pretty much.