I think that is the role of the artist in society - the cultural role of the artist is to perform a healing function.

I think that is the role of the artist in society - the cultural role of the artist is to perform a healing function.

It's hard to fathom the psychology of the economics of art. I don't quite understand it, and I don't necessarily want to understand it.

Design is meant to grab you and win you over. It is meant to function in a way so as to make life easier. Obviously painting has to do with something quite beyond that. It's not about communication per se. It doesn't necessarily telegraph anything. It's more about understanding who we are and where we come from.

For me, the whole idea of the radically new is tied to a close reconsideration of older sources. I like to give myself over to those sources, as points of origin, in order to bring things forward. My approach requires me to internalize my sources as much as possible in the hope that new themes might emerge. The material has to be internalized in order for it to live again. Ultimately, paintings reveal themselves on the basis of what they are. They are inseparable from the physical process that goes into their making.

I'm very tolerant of other art and other artists. But what I truly appreciate, what I truly admire in contemporary art, is work that takes on more than it can sometimes handle - art that gets in over its head.

Art exists through the act of making. It has to somehow be made manifest to another person. It has to do with what one wants to see manifest, what one wants to bring into the world, what one desires to have exist.