To paint is a possessing rather than a picturing.

I do not see why the loss of faith in the known image and symbol in our time should be celebrated as a freedom. It is a loss from which we suffer, and this pathos motivates modern painting and poetry at its heart.

I am a night painter, so when I come into the studio the next morning the delirium is over.

Painting is an illusion, a piece of magic, so what you see is not what you see.

But you begin to feel as you go on working that unless painting proves its right to exist by being critical and self-judging, it has no reason to exist at all - or is not even possible. The canvas is a court where the artist is prosecutor, defendant, jury and judge. Art without a trial disappears at a glance.

To paint is a possessing rather than a picturing.

There's some mysterious process at work here, which I don't even want to understand.