I am not an exponent of expressionism. I don’t know exactly what that means, but I don’t like the sound of it. I dislike cults and isms. I want to paint in terms of my own thinking and feeling.
I always have a curious sort of feeling about some of my things – I hate to show them – I am perfectly inconsistent about it – I am afraid people won’t understand – and I hope they won’t – and am afraid they will.
It seems to be my mission in life to wait on a dog.
Interest is the most important thing in life; happiness is temporary, but interest is continuous.
I don’t see why we ever think of what others think of what we do – no matter who they are. Isn’t it enough just to express yourself?
I got half-a-dozen paintings from that shattered plate.
My first memory is of light – the brightness of light – light all around.
I’m frightened all the time. But I never let it stop me. Never!
If you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for a moment.
I think it’s so foolish for people to want to be happy. Happy is so momentary – you’re happy for an instant and then you start thinking again. Interest is the most important thing in life; happiness is temporary, but interest is continuous.
I can’t live where I want to, I can’t go where I want to go, I can’t do what I want to, I can’t even say what I want to. I decided I was a very stupid fool not to at least paint as I wanted to.
It was in the 1920s, when nobody had time to reflect, that I saw a still-life painting with a flower that was perfectly exquisite, but so small you really could not appreciate it.
I often painted fragments of things because it seemed to make my statement as well as or better than the whole could.
I know now that most people are so closely concerned with themselves that they are not aware of their own individuality, I can see myself, and it has helped me to say what I want to say in paint.
Marks on paper are free – free speech – press – pictures all go together I suppose.
You get whatever accomplishment you are willing to declare.
Sometimes I start in a very realistic fashion, and as I go on from one painting to another of the same kind, it becomes simplified until it can be nothing but abstraction.
When you get so that you can’t see, you come to it gradually. And if you didn’t come by it gradually, I guess you’d just kill yourself when you couldn’t see.
I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught.
To create one’s world in any of the arts takes courage.