A conscious decision to eliminate certain details and include selective bits of personal experiences or perceptual nuances, gives the painting more of a multi-dimension than when it is done directly as a visual recording. This results in a kind of abstraction... and thus avoids the pitfalls of mere decoration.

Art means something very rare, an extraordinary achievement.

An artist has to train his responses more than other people do. He has to be as disciplined as a mathematician. Discipline is not a restriction but an aid to freedom. It prepares an artist to choose his own limitations.

Art is not delivered like the morning paper; it has to be stolen from Mount Olympus.

I haven't the slightest idea what art is, but to be a painter is something of which you have to prove.

Common objects become strangely uncommon when removed from their context and ordinary ways of being seen.

Every paint-stroke takes you farther and farther away from your initial concept. And you have to be thankful for that.