Painting is the most magical of mediums. The transcendence is truly amazing to me every time I go to a museum and I see how somebody figured another way to rub colored dirt on a flat surface and make space where there is no space or make you think of a life experience.
From my point of view, photography never got any better than it was in 1840.
I think I was driven to paint portraits to commit images of friends and family to memory. I have face blindness, and once a face is flattened out, I can remember it better.
At the same time that I’m finding the color world I want, I’m also trying to make the imagery, you know, by the nature of the strokes themselves.
Far more interesting than problem solving is problem creation.
When you come up in the art world, whatevers in the air, the issues of the moment, end up becoming part of the working method or modus operandi of how you think about doing a painting. And I came up at a time when-actually painting was dead when I came up. Sculpture sort of ruled.
Painting is the frozen evidence of a performance.
I knew from the age of five what I wanted to do. The one thing I could do was draw. I couldn’t draw that much better than some of the other kids, but I cared more and I wanted it badly.
The camera is objective. When it records a face it can’t make any hierarchical decisions about a nose being more important than a cheek. The camera is not aware of what it is looking at. It just gets it all down.
Painting is a lie. It’s the most magic of all media, the most transcendent. It makes space where there is no space.
Inspiration is for amateurs. Professionals work every day. Personally, the best inspiration is a deadline.
I did some pastels and I did other pieces in which there was just basically one color per square, and then they would get bigger and I could get 2 or 3 colors into the square, and ultimately I just started making oil paintings.
The reason I don’t like realist, photorealist, neorealist, or whatever, is that I am as interested in the artificial as I am in the real.
I love sculpture, and minimal sculpture is really my favorite stuff, but I wasn’t very good at it, and I don’t think in a three-dimensional way.
I only use three primaries, so the nice thing is I can’t have favorite colors.
Having a routine, knowing what to do, gives me a sense of freedom and keeps me from going crazy. It’s calming.
There are things about signing on to a process over the long term that protect you from the buffeting winds of change.
I never said the camera was truth. It is, however, a more accurate and more objective way of seeing.
You can give the same recipe to ten cooks, and some make it come alive, and some make a flat souffle. A system doesn’t guarantee anything.
I don’t believe in inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs. Some of the time you know you’re cooking, and the rest of the time, you just do it.