If you're any kind of artist, you make a miraculous journey, and you come back and make some statements in shapes and colors of where you were.

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.

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.

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.

If you're any kind of artist, you make a miraculous journey, and you come back and make some statements in shapes and colors of where you were.

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