A painting only lives in the eye of the beholder
Without great solitude no serious work is possible.
I understand my own pictures best six months after I have done them.
In art, there is neither past nor future. The art that is not in the present will never be.
Races and religions may have changed, but the marketplace, the living quarters, pilgrimage sites, places of worship, have remained the same. Venus is replaced by the Virgin, but the same life goes on.
One must act in painting as in life, directly.