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.

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

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.

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

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.

Practically all great artists accept the influence of others. But... the artist with vision sees his material, chooses, changes, and by integrating what he has learned with his own experiences, finally molds something distinctly personnel.