The artist confronts chaos. The whole thing of art is, how do you organize chaos?

The artist has to be something like a whale swimming with his mouth wide open, absorbing everything until he has what he really needs.

The essence of art is to recapturel the fantasy and the imagination of a child again, but without the innocence of a child.

The artist confronts chaos. The whole thing of art is, how do you organize chaos?

It was not my aim to paint about the Negro in America in terms of propaganda. It is to depict the life of my people as I know it, passionately and dispassionately as Brueghel.

The most difficult object in painting is yourself because you're always at issue

What I've attempted to do is establish a world through art in which the validity of my Negro experience could live and make its own logic.