As one gets older one sees many more paths that could be taken. Artists sense within their own work that kind of swelling of possibilities, which may seem a freedom or a confusion.
To be an artist you have to give up everything, including the desire to be a good artist.
I’m not looking for images, They just appear and take on an interest. Sometimes you look at a thing and it has no interest and then you see it in a different way and it has another meaning. Or something that was of no use will become useful.
One night I dreamed that I painted a large American flag, and the next morning I got up and I went out and bought the materials to begin it.
Take an object. Do something to it. Do something else to it.
I assumed that everything would lead to complete failure, but I decided that didn’t matter – that would be my life.
There was very little art in my childhood. I was raised in South Carolina; I wasn’t aware of any art in South Carolina. There was a minor museum in Charleston, which had nothing of interest in it. It showed local artists, paintings of birds.
I don’t know how to organise thoughts. I don’t know how to have thoughts.
I tend to like things that already exist.
Early on I was very involved with the notion of the painting as an object and tended to attack that idea from different directions.
I have no ideas about what the paintings imply about the world. I don’t think that’s a painter’s business. He just paints paintings without a conscious reason.
One works without thinking how to work.
When you work you learn something about what you are doing and you develop habits and procedures out of what you’re doing.