Black art has always existed. It just hasn't been looked for in the right places.

When I conjure these memories, they are of the present to me, because after all, the artist is a kind of enchanter in time.

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.

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

Memory embellishes Life. Forgetfulness makes it possible.

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.

You don't paint what you see, you paint what you feel.