I want to see how life can triumph.

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 and art cannot be taught. You can save time if someone tells you to put blue and yellow together to make green, but the essence of painting is a self-disciplined activity that you have to learn by yourself.

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

Painting is a self-disciplined activity that you have to learn by yourself.

You put down one color and it calls for an answer. You have to look at it like a melody.