My mother was a restorer, she repaired broken things. I don’t do that. I destroy things. I cannot go the straight line. I must destroy, rebuild, destroy again. My rhythm is not the same. My mother moved in a straight line: I go from one extreme to the other.
I do not need the musing of the philosophers to tell me what I am doing. It would be more interesting to let me know why I am doing it.
In my sculpture, it’s not an image I am seeking, it’s not an idea. My goal is to re-live a past emotion. My art is an exorcism, and beauty is something I never talk about.
The feminists took me as a role model, as a mother. It bothers me. I am not interested in being a mother. I am still a girl trying to understand myself.
You must put the essence of what you want to say into a painting. The rest is arbitrary. Chosen with discernment, but chosen, and choice involves elimination.
My knives are like a tongue – I love, I do not love, I hate. If you don’t love me, I am ready to attack. I am a double-edged knife.
My art is a form of restoration in terms of my feelings to myself and to others.
I have kept a diary as long as I can remember, and drawings are really another kind of diary.
It is a great privilege to be able to work with, and I suppose work off, my feelings through sculpture.
Sometimes it is necessary to make a confrontation-and I like that.
My childhood has never lost its magic, it has never lost its mystery, and it has never lost its drama.
Art is a guarantee of sanity.
I always had the fear of being separated and abandoned. The sewing is my attempt to keep things together and make things whole.
Art is a way of recognizing oneself...
My work disturbs people and nobody wants to be disturbed. They are not fully aware of the effect my work has on them, but they know it is disturbing.
The subject of pain is the business I am in – to give meaning and shape to frustration and suffering. The existence of pain cannot be denied. I propose no remedies or excuses.
Horizontality is a desire to give up, to sleep. Verticality is an attempt to escape. Hanging and floating are states of ambivalence.
Art is manipulation without intervention.
I like Francis Bacon best, because Francis Bacon has terrific problems, and he knows that he is not going to solve them, but he knows also that he can escape from day to day and stay alive, and he does that because his work gives him a kick.
Every day you have to abandon your past or accept it and then, if you cannot accept it, you become a sculptor.