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

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.

Art is the soul of a people.

You should always respect what you are and your culture because if your art is going to mean anything, that is where it comes from.

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

Painting is the act of discovery and you're constantly enlarging your horizon or finding yourself every time you paint.

Sometimes the mind relives things very clearly for us...There are roads out of secret places within us along which we all must move as we go to touch others.