Painting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made - I try to act in the gap.

For the first time, I wasn't embarrassed by the look of beauty, of elegance, because when you see someone who has only one rag as their property, but it happens to be beautiful and pink and silk, beauty doesn't have to be separated... I have always said that you shouldn't have biases, you shouldn't have prejudices. But before that [before his trip to India, circa 1975] I'd never been able to use purple, because it was too beautiful.

You begin with the possibilities of the material.

I don't mess around with my subconscious

With me, it's much more a matter of accepting whatever happens, accepting all these elements from the outside and then trying to work with them in a sort of free collaboration.

Well, I like way downtown near the Battery. I lived down there at this time and for, I guess, the following well, this is where I moved to uptown and I've been here for four years and this is 1965.

I think a painting is more like the real world if it's made out the real world.